Analysis of acoustic behavior of bare CLT floors for the evaluation of impact sound insulation improvement

Estimation of the impact sound insulation of horizontal partitions, evaluated from the performance of basic components according to EN 12354-2, does not provide satisfactory results when applied to floors made of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) elements. One of the most interesting reasons for this limited match between predicted and measured impact noise values is the difficulty of correlating the reduction of the impact sound pressure level of the floor covering, measured in a laboratory on a concrete slab, with the actual behavior on a bare CLT floor. Reported here are the results of laboratory evaluations, independently carried out by various researchers on similar CLT structures. The purpose of this study is to identify the empirical spectrum of the normalized impact sound pressure level of a reference floor made according to CLT technology, to provide a simple and useful tool for estimating the noise insulation performances of this type of building element