Human-induced vibration of cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor under different boundary conditions

Vibration of a cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor is strongly related to its boundary conditions. In this study, the effect of beam spacing, beam size and supporting conditions on the dynamic behaviours of CLT floors were investigated. To this end, the open-source software framework Open Software for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OPENSEES) was used to simulate the dynamic performance of CLT floors and the simulated results were validated against the results of onsite experiments. OPENSEES is under continual development, and is mainly used to develop applications for simulating the behaviour of structures and geotechnical systems under seismic excitations. In this study, a novel model was developed to enable OPENSEES to carry out foot-fall analyses. Moreover, an analytical model was established to enable engineers to quickly estimate the relevant dynamic properties of CLT floors with different boundary conditions. The simulated results agreed well with the experimental data. According to those simulated results, increasing the spacing between the beams would reduce the natural frequency and increase the vibration acceleration significantly. Moreover, the results indicate that increasing the beam stiffness up to a certain level would increase the natural frequency of the CLT floors, and consequently enhance their serviceability performance. The one-way and two-way CLT floors show little difference in vibration performance when the beams can provide sufficient support.