Eng-Tips is the largest forum for Engineering Professionals on the Internet.

Members share and learn making Eng-Tips Forums the best source of engineering information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations JStephen on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Vibration of WF Beam Girders Supporting Steel Joists for Banquet Hall

mfstructural

Structural
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
233
Location
US
All,
I'm working on a project where the client purchased a building without consulting a structural engineer regarding the floor system. The building is two stories, no basement. There are multiple column lines spaced 29' in one direction, with HSS columns spaced at 25' and 40' in the other direction. the 40' span is in the middle of the building. The steel joists are 18k4 @ 2' o.c. spanning in the 29' directions supported by W24x62 girders. The second story of the building was originally designed for a LL of 75 psf per the designed drawings from 1999. The owner wants to convert the building from store/office use to a banquet hall, which is 100 psf LL. The joists showed that the top chord, bottom chord, and 3 web members at the ends required reinforcing for strength, which is pretty straightforward. The issue then becomes when the floor is evaluated for vibration from dancing. I reviewed AISC Design Guide 11 and used the floorvibe software to evaluate the floor. The software output states that the existing system doesn't work which makes sense based on LL also increasing.

1752075923749.png

Assuming the WF girders and joists are reinforced approximating the section properties below, the system still does not work for vibration.

1752076066145.png

I wanted to see if anyone else has come across something like this. I understand the criterion, but from a judgement perspective I am trying to understand if performing all the reinforcing will work and not yield excessive vibration. The acceleration is worse with less LL, presumably because there is less load "weighing" down the joists and girders.

Will a W24x62 really vibrate to that extent under load?

If I reduce the girder span to 13' (place a column underneath) it works but that is not an option per the client.

Thanks,
 
The floor will vibrate mostly at its natural frequency, not the frequency of the dancers' movements. 5 Hz is a fairly low value for natural frequency.

The lowest (not quite) believable natural frequency is 2 Hz. The displacement amplitude corresponding to 50%g would be (0.5*386 in./s^2) / (2 * pi * 2 Hz)^2 = 1.2 in.

Let's come at this from the opposite direction. If the floor had a displacement amplitude of 6 in., then its acceleration would be the following for a few different frequencies:

(6 in.)*(2 * pi * 2 Hz)^2 * (1g / 386 in./s^2) = 2.5g
5 Hz: 15g
8 Hz: 39g

I'm almost suspecting you guys are messing with me. LOL
Guess it depends on the spans and materials of construction. In industrial I've certainly come across structures with natural frequencies in the 1-2 Hz range. Some long slender galleries, sometimes I low tune a tower to support vibrating equipment. Having seen how these bounce with just a few people on them, I could believe 6" with a lot of people.
 
This is a good discussion. I have performed the analysis for all types of scenarios and the only thing that really works is welding large WF sections to the underside of the girders and installing W21 sections in between the existing floor joists at 4' on center. the frequency is then 3%, still above the criteria, but believe that the joists would create additional stiffness to lower the vibrations.

I have to relay the information to the client and we'll see if they want to reinforce or rework their floor plan.
 
mfstructural
Have you made any check regarding the original floor with people walking? That I would find interesting because even if the "Dancing" is a worse load than "Walking" it not so much worse that it explains the very high acceleration in your first analysis.

Another thought here. Do you have any idea how much of the floor area is subject to the high floor accelerations? I assume that the analysis you have performesd is made with the software you mentioned. That software does not give you such information, correct? One approach might be to use another software to get a better understanding of the vibrations. What I mean by that is the mode shapes for the floor, that will give an idea regarding how much of the floor is vibrating.

You mention that you have made modifications and the frequency is then "3%", I assume that you mean 3 Hz, but I don't understand the mentioning of criteria in that context because frequency is not a criteria. Another thing,in dynamics you have three parametars to "play" with, stiffness, mass and damping. The first two can usually be calculated with reasonable accuracy while the last is more difficult. Damping often has to be measured to get correct values. That is why we usually maka a conservative assumtion.

My impression is that you are currently only working with the stiffness. Is that correct?
 

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top