Composite floor beams with constrained layer Damping: experimental tests on reduced scale models

Resumen

Vibration Serviceability Limit State due to human-induced vibrations is an important requirement that increasingly influences the sizing of current long-span floors. Usually, structural designers tend to overcome this issue by stiffening the floor to avoid any low-frequency response in resonance with human footfalls. An alternative solution to this one consist of increasing the floor’s damping to enhance its dynamic performance. This paper experimentally studies the effectiveness of a Constrained Layer Damping (CLD) treatment applied along the whole length of a typical composite floor beam. The aim of the paper is to quantify the additional damping ratio provided by this damping technique. To reduce the economical and time effort involved in a Full-scale experimental campaign, two reduced-scale models (RSMs) were developed with and without any CLD treatment. Those models were designed to exhibit the same amount of extra damping ratio when treated with the same CLD configuration to be used in Full-scale specimens. Once the RSMs were designed and built, free-response tests were performed to derive their natural frequencies and the relation between their damping ratio and the vibration amplitude.