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Have you performed a Bounce test on a Building?

Have you performed a bounce test on a building or structural system to determine the structural integrity of a building or a structural system? If you have is there a standard procedure or code?

Update:

This is all the information I have. Dropping a weight(?) on the floor and measuring the floor's reponse to determine if the structural intgerity of the floor is satisfactory. I find it hard to believe.

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    You'll have to explain what you mean by a bounce test.

    Otherwise, you're probably asking about a heel drop test, get a 150 pound person have them stand on their toes, then drop onto their heels, there is a standard procedure for this, though I don't know if it has an ASTM number or not. This is used typically as a simulation during design, or as a in situ (once constructed) test.

    There are other tests for say, dancing exitation, but in design the objective is to limit acceleration from the heel-drop or the simulated dancer. The field isn't exact and the standard of care is not very well defined either.

    When you get complaints about floors vibrating, it is very, very, very rarely a strength issue with the floor being inadequate for the loads imposed, it is that they are relatively flexible, not very damped systems, without a lot of dead load.

    As an experiment, try the heel-drop test with a friend in a bookstore and again in someplace without any furniture. The results are usually quite different. The weight on the floor helps suppress the damping because there is more mass to accelerate, so lower acceleration. There are small dampers you can install (viscoelastic dampers), and these were used as early as the 1970s (on the WTC 1/2 complex), and there are still smaller ones that are active dampers that are being developed at Virginia tech in the U.S.

    Scholars to look for include Ellingwood and Thomas Murray.

    If that's what you're talking about, that is.

    updated: Well, if that's the real test, I find it hard to believe also, it's a test for the dynamic frequency of the floor system, and that isn't exactly strongly related to the strength of the floor. Most of these 'vibration problems' are servicability - the occupants of the building don't like it, but there isn't anything wrong with the strength of the structure, it just happens to vibrate in a way that bothers the occupants. Is this in the US?

    Source(s): I'm a structural engineer in the US.
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