PARAMETRIC STUDY OF SLAB FLOORS VIBRATION

Mehdi Heidari
School of Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Sarvestan Branch, Iran, Sarvestan e-mail: mmhc790@gmail.com The manufacturing buildings contain many vibrating sources such as pumps, compressors, air handling units and other equipment that all contribute to the excitation of the floors. In this paper, the vibrating response of floors is evaluated in terms of displacement and resonance frequency that depend on the damping and thickness of the floor, bay size and stiffness of the columns. The results showed that the vibration response of the floor is due to the summation of a number of closely spaced vibration modes and the bay size has the greatest influence on the lowest resonance frequency of the floor.

1.

Introduction

The Floor vibration affects not only the comfort of the occupants but also sensitive equipment that might be on the floor, especially in industrial and laboratory settings. Excessive floor vibration can even cause some equipment to malfunction. The locations of vibrating sources (such as pumps, compressors, air handling units, and people walking on the floor) are distributed throughout the manufacturing buildings and adjacent central utility buildings. These vibrating sources generate tonal and broad-band vibration associated with the rotational frequency of shafts, and from the friction and turbulence of liquids and gases in piping. In such buildings, the floor must resist the inertial forces generated by the vibrating sources, the transmission of energy from vibration sources to vibration sensitive facilities should be minimized, and the vibration generated from one source should not affect the operation of adjacent vibration sensitive facilities. One way to minimize vibrations is with a slab-on-grade floor, but often this is not possible due to constraints such as lot size or the requirement of a basement for mechanical equipment or piping. Several generic vibration criteria are in use for designing vibration-sensitive facilities in addition to a large collection of manufacturers' criteria for particular items of equipment (Ungar et al. 1990, Gordon 1987, Ungar and white 1970).1,2,3 These criteria are specified in terms of velocity amplitude, as it has been shown that vibration sensitivity is, in general, a function of vibration amplitude within a specific frequency range rather than being a function of stiffness, frequency, or floor type alone. Lenzen (1966) presented a criterion for judging the severity of transient floor vibration. 4 The empirical relationship for the velocity response of the floor due to broad-band mechanical excitation is given by Vmech = C/k, where C is a constant and k is the stiffness at the midbay (Amick et al. 1991). 5 A number of analytical procedures have also been developed which allow a structural designer to assess the floor structure for suitability of sensitive equipment. Generally, these analytical tools require the calculation of the first natural frequency of the floor system and the maximum amplitude of acceleration, velocity or displacement for a reference excitation. An estimate of damping in the floor is also required in some instances. A sensitive equipment criterion
ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV20), Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013 is then used to determine whether the floor system meets serviceability requirements. Some of the analytical tools incorporate limits on acceleration into a single design formula whose parameters are estimated by the designer. Petyt and Mirza (1972) used finite element modelling to calculate the mode shapes of floor slabs on four column supports. Several configurations of bays were studied and their results showed that the lowest resonance frequency occurs when adjacent bays are vibrating out of phase, and the response of one bay is influenced by the vibration of adjacent bays.6 Amick et al. (1999) described a model for the vibration attenuation with distance along the floor by proposing several models such as exponential, linear, and power decaying with distance from the source. 7 Howard and Hansen (2003) presented a mathematical model for the analysis of vibration at the center of a bay and the transmission of vibration along a waffle floor.8 The mathematical model was compared with finite element models and experimental results from several manufacturing buildings, and showed good agreement. The vibrating response of floors depends on several parameters such as damping and thickness of the floor, size of the bays and stiffness of the columns. In this paper a comprehensive study is conducted to study the effect of dynamic characteristics of a slab floors on the vibrating response by using finite element techniques. Finally, an approximate relationship is proposed that comforts the designers to attain a preliminary and appropriate outline in designing the slab floors of industrial structures with vibration sensitive equipment.

2.

Finite element model

Finite element model of slab floors are created in ANSYS for different thickness of the floor, different size of the bays and different stiffness of the columns. Each bay is considered to be the square area that has vertices of four column supports. The edges of the plate are simply supported and the bay is modelled using 36 square shaped shell elements (shell 63) and linear spring and dashpot elements (combin 14) at the corner of each bay for the column supports. The nodes on the perimeter of model are set to simply supported boundary conditions. Figure 1 shows a finite element model of a floor created in ANSYS that has 99 bays supported on columns.

Figure 1. ANSYS model for slab floor

The floor response under dynamic sinusoidal load is evaluated in terms of maximum displacement and frequency of floor system. In order to conduct a comprehensive parametric study, the ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013 2

20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV20), Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013 finite element models are created with floor thickness varied between 0.2 and 0.6 m in steps of 0.05 m, bay size varied between 4 and 8 m in steps of 1.0 m, column stiffness varied between 5e7 and 5e9 N/m. The floor response under dynamic sinusoidal load is evaluated in terms of maximum displacement and frequency of floor system. The reliability of the model analysis in predicting the dynamic response of slab floor is examined by comparing the results with those obtained from laboratory and ANSYS model of Howard and Hanson (2003), as shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 2. The Comparison of the displacement at the midbay

3.

Results and discussion

Figure 3 shows the displacement at the midbay of the slab floor when the bay size is varied from 4 m to 8 m for a floor thickness of 0.2 m. The results show that as the bay size is increased, the resonance frequency decreases and the displacement at resonance increases.

Figure 3. Change in the resonance frequency of floor for different values of bay size, with a floor thickness of 0.2 m.

ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV20), Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013 Figure 4 displays the displacement of floors with a bay size of 4 m and a floor thickness of 0.2 m for several values of column stiffness. The results show that as the column stiffness increases, the displacement at the first resonance frequency slightly decreases and the first resonance frequency increases.

Figure 4. Change in the resonance frequency of floor for different values of column stiffness, with a bay size of 4 m and a floor thickness of 0.2 m.

Figure 5 shows the displacement of the floor at the midbay when the floor thickness is varied, for a bay size of 7 m and column stiffness of 1e8 N/m. The results indicate that as the floor thickness increases, the first resonance frequency increases and the amplitude at the resonance frequency decreases.

Figure 5. Change in the resonance frequency of floor for different values of floor thickness, with a bay size of 7 m and a column stiffness of 1e9 N/m.

Figure 6 shows the similar trend for a bay size of 4 m with a floor thickness lower than 0.4 m, however, as the floor thickness increases; the resonance frequency no longer increases and begins to

ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV20), Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013 decrease. In this case, the bending stiffness of the floor becomes comparable to the vertical stiffness of the supporting columns, and so the displacement of the floor is controlled by the stiffness of the columns. Figure 7 compares the variation of resonant frequency of slab floor with floor thickness for two different bay sizes of 4 m and 7 m.

Figure 6. Change in the resonance frequency of floor for different values of floor thickness, with a bay size of 4 m and a column stiffness of 1e8 N/m.

Figure 7. Variation of resonance frequency of floor with floor thickness, for a bay size of 4 and 7 m and a column stiffness of 1e8 N/m.

Figure 8 shows the variation of maximum displacement of floor with floor thickness for different value of bay size with column stiffness of 1e8 N/m. It is obvious that as the floor thickness increases from 0.15 to 0.6 m, the maximum displacement of the floor significantly decreases to 90 % of its initial value, with (almost) the same decreasing trend for the bay size of 4 and 7 m.

ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV20), Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

Figure 8. Variation of maximum displacement of floor with floor thickness, for a bay size of 4 and 7 m and a column stiffness of 1e8 N/m.

4.

Proposed relationship

Based on the comprehensive parametric study on the effect of different parameters including the bay size, floor thickness and stiffness of the supporting columns, an approximate relationship is proposed to predict the displacement at the center of floor and response frequency of vibration of slab floor subjected to harmonic loading. The suggested relationship is derived based on the results of 250 ANSYS models by using a nonlinear regression analysis for the two different cases of simply-supported and fixed-supported floor edge conditions. The equations for the prediction of displacement (d) and frequency (F) of slab floor for simply supported edge condition are

(1)

And the equations for the fixed supported edge condition are

(2)

where a, b, c and e are the constants of the relationships to predict the displacement (in meter) and frequency (in Hertz) of slab floor. The proposed formulations would help the designers of industrial structures to achieve a preliminary design outline by incorporating the effective parameters on the vibration of slab floors.

ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV20), Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013

5.

Conclusion

A Finite element modelling is used in this study to investigate the trends in the vibration response for variations in the bay size, floor thickness, and stiffness of the columns. It is concluded that the bay size has the greatest influence on the lowest resonance frequency of the floor. The resonance frequency of the floor will vary proportionally to the thickness when the bending stiffness of the floor is less than the stiffness of the columns, and the resonance frequency will vary inversely proportional to the square root of the thickness when the bending stiffness of the floor is greater than the stiffness of the columns. The thickness of the slab is an important element in reducing floor vibrations where a slight increase in slab thickness can reduce floor vibrations considerably. The result of this study can be used to present a relationship to quickly assess several concept designs of slab floors under vibrating loads.

REFERENCES
1

E. Ungar, D. H. Sturz, and H. Amick, "Vibration Control Design of High Technology Facilities," Sound and Vibration, July (1990). 2 C. G. Gordon, "The Design of Low-Vibration Buildings for Microelectronics and Other Occupancies," presented at the First International Conference on Vibration Control in Optics and Metrology, London, February (1987). 3 E. Ungar and R. White, "Footfall-Induced Vibration of Floors Supporting Sensitive Equipment," Sound and Vibration, 10, October (1970). 4 K. H. Lenzen, Vibration of Steel Joist-Concrete Slab Floors Engineering Journal, AISC, 3, 133-136, (1966). 5 H. Amick, S. Hardash, P. Gillett, RJ. Reaveley, Design of stiff, low-vibration floor structures In: Proceedings of International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), 1619, San Jose, California, USA. 18091 (1991). 6 M. Petyt, W. Mirza. Vibration of column-supported floor slabs Sound and Vibration; 21(3), 35564, (1972). 7 H. Amick, M. Gendreau, A. Bayat. Dynamic characteristics of structures extracted from in-situ testing. In: SPIE Conference on Opto-mechanical Engineering and Vibration Control, Denver, Colorado, USA, 378605, (1999). 8 C.Q. Howard, C. H. Hansen, Vibration analysis of waffle floors, Computers and Structures, 81, 1526, (2003).

ICSV20, Bangkok, Thailand, 7-11 July 2013