Building vibrations induced by human activities: a benchmark of existing standards

Service de Mécanique Rationnelle, Dynamique et Vibrations, Université de Mons, Faculté Polytechnique, Boulevard Dolez 31, 7000 Mons, Belgique

^a Corresponding author: georges.kouroussis@umons.ac.be

Received: 7 January 2014
Accepted: 15 May 2014

Abstract

Vibrations in buildings impact the behaviour of structures and humans, for sources defined as internal or external to the building. Besides the comparison of vibrations to fixed limits, the choice of a relevant indicator is unavoidable and this indicator is defined differently according to the selected reference text. Various standards (or directives similar to standards) exist and this paper focuses on the most important and the most used ones, for ground vibrations induced to buildings or for human exposure inside buildings. In addition to the interest of comparing values to well-defined and well-known limits, the knowledge of these standards allows the use of suitable indicators. Various vibration signals are used, from a simple harmonic signal to complex vibrations generated by railway traffic, in order to present a relevant analysis of severity of each norm. It turns out that criteria noticeably vary from one reference to another one, and that the thresholds are different for each standard.