Experimental and analytical studies on the vibration serviceability of pre-stressed cable RC truss floor systems

• Vibration of innovative PCT floor is investigated experimentally and theoretically.
• Vibration of PCT floor induced steady-state incentive is firstly exhibited.
• The investigated PCT floor exhibits satisfactory vibration behavior.
• The analytical solution of PCT floor subjected to walking was obtained.

The developed pre-stressed cable reinforced concrete truss (PCT) floor system is a relatively new floor structure, which can be applied to various long-span structures such as buildings, stadiums, and bridges. Due to the lighter mass and longer span, floor vibration would be a serviceability concern problem for such systems. In this paper, field testing and theoretical analysis for the PCT floor system were conducted. Specifically, heel-drop impact and walking tests were performed on the PCT floor system to capture the dynamic properties including natural frequencies, mode shapes, damping ratios, and acceleration response. The PCT floor system was found to be a low frequency (<10 Hz) and low damping (damping ratio<2 percent) structural system. The comparison of the experimental results with the AISC׳s limiting values indicates that the investigated PCT system exhibits satisfactory vibration perceptibility, however. The analytical solution obtained from the weighted residual method agrees well with the experimental results and thus validates the proposed analytical expression. Sensitivity studies using the analytical solution were also conducted to investigate the vibration performance of the PCT floor system.