Source substitution method for obtaining the power transmission from vibrating sources in buildings

This paper describes a method analogous to the airborne sound source substitution method, to estimate the vibrational power injected by a structure-borne sound source into the supporting building element. The injected vibrational power is required for prediction of the structure-borne sound pressure from vibrating equipment in buildings. The paper focuses on high-mobility sources connected to low-mobility receivers, a situation which is commonly encountered in heavyweight construction. The mobility mismatch simplifies the transformation of laboratory measurement data to prediction of transmitted power in-situ. Three case studies were performed. In the first study, the power injected by a simple test source into a resiliently supported aluminium plate was determined using direct and indirect methods. Source substitution was investigated with different calibration options: steady-state excitation, transient excitation, and spatial averaging. The source power could be determined within 4 dB, compared with direct measurements of the injected power. In the second study, the power injected by a second source into a concrete transmission suite floor was determined. The third study was of a combined heating and power unit on a masonry wall. In this study, a reference sound pressure level in a receiver room was calculated and compared with a criterion curve for the assessment of low-frequency noise complaints. The case studies demonstrate that structure-borne sound source substitution is a promising development of the reception plate method. While the latter can be used if a free reception plate is available, the former circumvents problems of determining the transmitted power into coupled plates and therefore has application to real building conditions. The use of the instrumented hammer for the calibration and the use of spatial averaging significantly simplify the method.