On the Low Frequency Impact Noise Measurement in Residential Buildings

We commonly encounter cases that, despite the fact that buildings meet normative requirements, people are disturbed by unwanted noise generated by walking and other sources of impact noise. It is not unusual that in practice the designer often moves on the edge of the required criteria in order to reduce the cost of constructions and its parts. In this article, we selected 4 blindly chosen cases of flats where complaints from residents about high levels of impact noise were recorded although the construction meets the requirements set out in the standard. Based on the obtained documentation of in-situ performed measurements by different consulting companies, BEM and FEM models were created, and the distribution of acoustic pressure in an enclosed space and compared different methods of spatial averaging of the resulting acoustic pressure were simulated. The aim of this analysis is to point some of the reasons for possible user complaints about the impact noise despite normative requirements. The usual problems are benevolent national requirements and the issue of measuring noise in the low frequency range and underestimating its significance. The article also discusses the currently set requirements for the evaluation of floor structures in selected countries.