Abstract

Timber social houses built in Chile use low cost floor systems based on radiate pine beams covered with plywood boards. This solution satisfies the current Chilean structural standards, but commonly has vibration levels that are intolerable for the users. In this work the necessity of incorporate the vibration serviceability criteria to the design of Chilean timber floor is discussed. Vertical accelerations induced by moving people are recorded on both laboratory prototypes and existing houses. Using this data, vibration performance indices (VDV) are computed and then compared with the BS 6472-2008 standard criteria. The VDV results show that the evaluated low cost Chilean floor systems overpass about 1.9 times the advisable limits, suggesting that the vibration behavior can control the design of the timber floors.