Numerical study on reducing building vibrations by foundation improvement
Author
Summary, in English
Vibration disturbances in buildings may stem from ambient sources, such as motorway traffic, or from internal sources such as people walking inside the building. Vibrations can exceed requirements for sensitive equipment or cause annoyance to humans and therefore the vibrations may need to be reduced. Vibrations from both external and internal sources can be reduced by modifying the properties of concrete slabs and of the soil underneath. Soil can be improved by being mixed with a binder material in order to increase its stiffness. In this study, parametric finite element analyses were conducted on the achieved vibration reduction on a slab on soil from improving the properties of a concrete slab on soil or of the soil underneath. The size, elastic modulus, and depth of the stabilised soil were found to markedly affect the level of reduction obtained. The soil stabilisation at a vibration-sensitive facility was used as an example case, where the developed finite element model was calibrated to green-field measurements carried out on-site. Frequency spectra of both road traffic loads and internal pedestrian loads were considered in the model. The calibrated finite element model predicted reductions of almost 60% for the road traffic and 80% for the pedestrian load.
Publishing year
2016-10-01
Language
English
Pages
361-375
Publication/Series
Engineering Structures
Volume
124
Links
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Building Technologies
Keywords
- Finite element method
- Soil dynamics
- Soil improvement
- Soil stabilisation
- Vibration measurements
- Vibration reduction measure
- Wave propagation
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0141-0296