An experimental study on the effects of floor impact sounds from damping materials using mineral binders

The installation of damping materials between a concrete slab and a form concrete layer was led to the disappearance of considerable impact noises by those materials to reduce floor impact noises in multi-dwelling houses. However, those damping materials currently used are mainly manufactured from organic materials with lower density and dynamic stiffness such as EPS, EVA, etc. These products generate a floating structure due to heterogeneous material layers and cause problems such as resonance and amplification of certain frequencies. Accordingly, this study manufactured mineral damping materials using mineral binders and applied the manufactured mineral damping materials to a floor structure, depending on physical properties such as density, dynamic stiffness and remnant strain among others, in a bid to analyze the characteristics of heavyweight impact noises and evaluate the reduction effects of floor impact noises. As a result of our experiments, both density and dynamic stiffness tended to increase due to the high specific gravity of raw materials if the powder types were applied when the mineral damping materials using mineral binders in the powder type and liquid type were manufactured, while the characteristic with the high strength development depending on the hydrated characteristics and acceleration of raw materials. Remnant strain appeared inversely proportional to both density and strength development ratio, great noise reduction was shown from materials with high density and strength of heavyweight impact noises and low remnant strain, and the correlation of dynamic stiffness with impact sound reduction was considered low.