Journal of Korean Institute of Architectural Sustainable Environment and Building Systems ISSN:1976-6483(Print) 2586-0666(Online) 한국건축친환경설비학회논문집

In spite of many advantages on energy efficiency and amenities in life, apartment house has a critical problem in floor impact noise, particularly heavy weight floor impact noise between floors. 50 dB of minimum performance and 210 mm of floor slab thickness were proposed and coded by Korean law and building code system since 2003 to mitigate the impact noise conflict. But there have been still many apartment houses which haven’t met the minimum performance level due to the shallow slabs and the other factors. In this paper, a practical solution to relieve the conflict between above and underneath floors due to the floor impact noise was proposed and verified, wearing indoor shoes. The characteristics and reduction of the impact sound were measured and analyzed in various conditions. The results showed that the lower the dynamic stiffness of indoor shoes buffer, the better the reduction level. The effect of wearing indoor shoes was concentrated on the 50-160 Hz frequency ranges, which affects the single number of the heavy floor impact sound. Unlike single impact sound when slow walking, a difference of 7.3-9.7 ㏈ was shown in the 50-160 ㎐ frequency ranges, which influenced the evaluation value of the heavy floor impact sound. And for girls, there was a difference of 8-11.9 ㏈. Because it is difficult to reduce the low-frequency band noise of heavy floor impact sounds, it is considered wearing indoor shoes is a very positive result as realistic alternative.