Fully-Floating Suspended Ceiling System: Experimental Evaluation of the Effect of Mass and Elastic Isolation

Abstract eng:
This paper reports a full scale shake table testing of a fully-floating ceiling within a steel frame. The 2.15 m by 4.55 m ceiling is suspended from the floor above by vertical steel wires. A gap of 150mm is provided on all four sides of the ceiling. In the tests, ceilings of different masses were used with the surrounding gap packed with elastic acoustic isolation material. The frame is subjected to sinusoidal motions, and random table motions consisting of a range of frequencies and amplitudes. A satisfactory agreement between the fully floating ceiling response and simple pendulum theory was demonstrated with low acceleration and displacement response in the ceiling grid and tiles at excitation frequencies far from the ceiling’s natural frequency of vibration. However, when subjected to input motions with frequencies close to the resonant frequency, the horizontal displacement of the ceiling exceeded the gap width resulting in large acceleration pulses due to the pounding action with the surrounding structure. The addition of an elastic perimeter isolation material was effective in decreasing the pounding impact and reducing the ceiling displacements and accelerations. The response of the test specimens was compared with the code requirements with respect to clearances. This comparison showed that the tested fully-floating ceiling had reduced ceiling displacements and accelerations as a result of the used ceiling isolation material. The only form of damage observed was a single panel dislodgement in one test.

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