COMPARISON OF VIBRATIONAL SERVICEABILITY CRITERIA FOR DESIGN OF TIMBER FLOORS AMONG THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

摘要

Practices of timber floor design with respect to serviceability criteria, including fundamental frequency, unit point load deflection and unit impulse velocity, in the EU countries have been summarised and their differences been assessed. The unit point load deflection criterion is the most crucial one for design of timber floors with various types of joists and usually dominates the whole design. Finland seems to be the strictest in design, followed by Norway, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria, while Denmark and the UK are the most generous. Even though EN 1995-1-1 has given general criteria for vibrational serviceability design of timber floors, the variations in the design equations and design limits are still large in the EU countries, and hence further harmonisation is still needed.