Building and Ground Vibration

Building and ground vibration is the unwanted effects of heavy transportation such as lorries and trains, pile-driving equipment and large machines such as heavy-duty compressors.

When discussing building and ground vibration attention must be given to the mounting techniques for vibration transducers and the instrumentation used if meaningful measurements are to be made. The vibration transducer mountings employed for the measurement of ground and building vibration depend largely on the nature of the problem and in particular whether it is one of possible damage or annoyance. The investigation will often be concerned with annoyance which will occur at much lower levels than damage to the building and hence measurements will usually be taken inside the building at the point of entry to the human body.

The Guide to the Evaluation of Human Exposure to Vibration in Buildings requires that the measurement should be made in three perpendicular directions on a building structure surface supporting the human body; the worst case result is then used. The vibration should be measured in terms of VDV (Vibration Dose Value) or RMS (Root Mean Squared) acceleration levels with frequency-weighting curves for each of the three measurement directions.