Effects of flooring, topping, and underlayment on impact sound insulation of wood-joisted floor-ceiling assemblies

Footstep impact noise transmission through floor-ceiling assemblies is a major source of complaints in wood-framed multi-family buildings. Experience shows that adding a finishing-topping-underlayment sandwich on a base floor-ceiling assembly significantly affects the noise transmission. So far, no reliable tool has been developed for designing the proper sandwich and most proposed solutions rely basically on trial and error. FPInnovations has launched a major research project to develop such tools. First phase of the project is focused on understanding the effects of flooring, topping and underlayment on the impact sound insulation. A mock-up assembly simulating a pair of typical stacked rooms was built. Standard field impact sound transmission tests were conducted on floors topped with a 1.2 m by 1.2 m four-layer sandwich patch. By varying the combination of flooring, topping and underlayment, over 50 patches were tested to better understand the effects of the type of materials in each layer on the assembly’s overall impact sound insulation. Based on a large number of tests conducted so far, it is evident that proper combination of flooring, topping and underlayment produces satisfactory impact sound insulation on wood-joisted floor-ceiling assembly. Verification testing on the assembly fully covered by the 4-layer samples is under way.