Lightweight Floating Floor Innovations in Gym/Sports Applications

Gyms, fitness spaces and health clubs in general, built within residential/commercial buildings, pose a great challenge for integration into their environment and are a well-known conundrum to acoustical consultants. Multi-disciplinary gym activities (such as running on treadmills, jumping, and weight lifting) generate a large range of noise and vibration in terms of the induced energy level and the frequency content. Gym floor isolation using lightweight solutions, especially where a variety of impact levels is generated in the different fitness areas, remains quite challenging for acousticians. To improve the isolation efficiency and making the gym floors less dependent on the impact level, a new concept has been developed. Laboratory and in-situ testing has been completed of this new concept under different drop weight energy levels (from 25 to 375 J) and compared to other lightweight floors as well as a bare concrete slab. Results of these tests show that the proposed concept significantly improves the efficiency of structure-borne noise isolation over a range of drop weight energy levels.