Sound insulation of access floors on CLT

The acoustic performance of access floors resting on concrete slabs has been long investigated. When such flooring solutions are used on lightweight construction systems, estimates of impact sound insulation improvements cannot be transferred without relevant loss of accuracy. To gain understanding on such behaviour, an experimental campaign has been carried out at the Building Envelope Lab of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano on 16 access floors mounted on a 200 mm CLT slab. Three different panels (calcium silicate, encapsulated calcium silicate and encapsulated chipboard panels), two different pedestals (standard and resilient), and three flooring solutions (bare, carpet tiles, acoustic carpet tiles) were studied. Impact sound insulation measurements were carried out using both the tapping machine and the rubber ball as source. The results discuss in detail the outcomes of the measurement campaign as well as the relation between the two impact sources chosen.