Sound.Wood.Austria - selected measurement results of building components for multi-storey timber construction in Austria

Abstract

With the increasing use of wood also for multi-storey dwellings, a wide variety of timber construction systems have been developed in Austria, of which in particular timber post and beam construction and solid timber construction in cross-laminated timber have become established. During the Internoise 2005, the first session on sound insulation in timber construction was initiated by Jean-Luc Kouyoumji. At that time, I was able to present first examples of multi-storey CLT dwellings in Austria. Today buiding with wood is a worldwide topic and there are still a lot of research questions, especially in the low-frequency range, in flanking transmission and optimization. Within the Sound.Wood.Austria research project, acoustic laboratory measurements of typical Austrian wood based building components were carried out in order to determine the effect of various design measures on sound insulation in a systematic approach and to identify possible optimization potential. Exterior and apartment partition walls as well as apartment partition ceilings were investigated. In this talk, selected measurement results will be presented and discussed. The results stress the fact, that further research work and developments, preferably internationally networked, are desirable in order to exploit the acoustic potential of timber buildings in the sense of "Green Deal".

Sound insulation properties of single and double CLT walls

“…For single walls, our collection consists of laboratory measurement results from [5], [6] and [7], i.e. laboratories in Canada, Austria and Norway.…”

“…With respect to the single number quantity, there are minor differences between the three laboratory measurements, but within some 1/3-octave band, significant differences at medium and low frequencies. Both influence of thickness and scattering in the spectrum below 500 Hz in object [6] and [7] is probably related to stiffness properties of the different layers. Above the critical frequency, the slope of the measured curves matches well the expected theoretical slope.…”

“…For double wall elements, our collection consists of laboratory measurement results also from [5], [6] and [7]. In this collection, the thickness of each wall element varies between 78 mm up to 100 mm, combined in different configurations for a total thickness up to 300 mm.…”

Acoustic Performance Investigation of a CLT-Based Three-Floor Building

“…The influence of the dynamic stiffness of the resilient interlayer in implemented floating systems as well the mass per unit area of the floors were found to be of importance. It should also be mentioned that within the ongoing "Sound Wood Austria" research project, the acoustic laboratory measurements of typical Austrian wooden building components were carried out in order to determine the effect of various design configurations on airborne and impact sound insulation in a systematic approach and to identify possible optimization potential [11]. Numerous configurations of wooden floors for lightweight CLT-frame buildings were also tested under laboratory conditions in Sweden [12], leading to encouraging results for solving problems of detrimental impact sound propagation in the low-frequency range in lightweight buildings made of CLT components.…”

Effects of Building Height on the Sound Transmission in Cross-Laminated Timber Buildings—Vibration Reduction Index

“…Several laboratories measured the performance of CLT elements with and without additional layers, including Refs. [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Vardaxis et al [26] measured various configurations of CLT slabs, focusing on layers of wet and dry solutions above the CLT.…”