Control of floor vibration and noise using multiple tuned mass dampers

The floor impact noise that occurs between upper and lower households in residential houses has been known as one of major causes that adversely affects residential environments and can lead to serious social troubles in a residential community. In order to alleviate this problem of floor impact noise and to improve the residential conditions, regulations are applied in many countries to reduce the floor impact noise. The floor impact noise can be divided into two categories - light weight floor impact noise and heavy weight floor impact noise - depending on the standard impact sources and the frequency range where the noise is dominant. The light weight floor impact noise generated in the high frequency ranges can be easily reduced by resilient material used in a conventional floating slab system, whereas the heavy weight floor impact noise induced by flexural vibration modes in the relatively lower frequency ranges is difficult to reduce using the traditional methodologies such as a floating slab system or increasing the thickness of slab. In this study, a new method is presented to effectively reduce the heavy weight floor impact noise induced by the vibration of slab using the multi tuned mass dampers (MTMDs). A substructure modal synthesis technique based on the FEM model is utilized to develop an analytical model of the slab coupled with MTMDs. Further, the acoustic power and acceleration responses are analyzed to evaluate the performance of the MTMDs in reducing floor impact noise. Numerical analysis is carried out to investigate the effect of the MTMD on the vibration and noise control of the simply supported slab.