PROCEEDINGS of the23rd International Congress on Acoustics
9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany

Experimental Investigation of Evaluation Method of HorizontalVibration in Building Caused by External Vibration Sources
Kentaro HAYASHI1; Yasunao MATSUMOTO 2; Toyohiko HIGASHIDA3
1

Saitama University, Benec Vibration and Sound Institute Inc., Japan
2

Saitama University, Japan
3

Sekisui House, Japan

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to examine the evaluation method based on subjective responses to vibration
caused by external vibration source including road traffic and railroads for building habitability. The targetbuildings were small-scale buildings, such as detached houses in Japan whose main structure was wooden or
steel frame. The first natural frequency of vibration mode of those building which has dominant horizontal
vibration has been known to be in the range from 4Hz to 8Hz. Horizontal vibrations at the ground in thatfrequency range can be amplified due to the dynamic characteristics of buildings. An experiment involving
human subjects were conducted to investigate relationship between subjective responses and evaluation
value computed from vibration acceleration time histories. The input stimuli consisted of sinusoidal
vibrations at 4Hz and 8Hz for several different durations and vibrations based on building vibrations
measured in actual residential buildings. 7-step evaluation scales composed of expressions to provide equal
psychological intensity intervals about magnitude, concern and discomfort were used to measure subjective
responses in the experiment. It was found that Vibration Dose Value, VDV, which evaluated the effect ofvibration duration by the 1/4 power, with Wd frequency weighting was most appropriate among theevaluation methods used in this study.
Keywords: Building Vibration, External Vibration Sources, Subjective Response, Vibration Evaluation

1. INTRODUCTION
In Japan, especially in urban areas, houses are adjacent to roads and railways. Since the distancefrom road or railway to building cannot be sufficiently secured, the building can be affected by traffic
induced vibration. The natural frequency of the fundamental horizontal vibration mode of wooden orsteel frame 2 or 3 story small-scale housing in Japan was in the frequency band of 4 to 8 Hz. In thisfrequency range, vibrations of small-scale buildings can be induced by external sources like roadtraffic and railways, with some amplification due to the dynamic characteristics of buildings. Althoughvibration at the ground due to an external vibration source is below the human vibration perception
threshold, a vibration problem can be caused by the vibration amplification due to building. For thisreason, when designing building at a site with ground vibration at a concerned magnitude, it isnecessary to design it for the performance for environmental vibration.
The ISO 2631 series (1,2), which is an international evaluation method, is not often used for thevibration evaluation of buildings in Japan, and the evaluation method of Architectural Institute ofJapan, AIJ (3), which has just been revised is generally used. However, there are some issues
recommended for further investigation in the evaluation method of AIJ, such as the evaluation ofsubjective response to horizonal transient vibration.
Therefore, this study carried out an experiment with human subjects using input stimuli
consisting of 4 Hz and 8 Hz sinusoidal vibration and real vibrations measured in the actual residentialbuildings. The relation between subjective responses, which were subjective magnitude, concern anddiscomfort, and some evaluation methods of environmental vibration were examined.
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hayashi-k@benec-vsi.co.jp
ymatsu@mail.saitama-u.ac.jp

h-toyo@ga.sekisuihouse.co.jp3637

2. Method
2.1 Apparatus
An electrodynamic shaker, Asahi Corporation VSR-S150H, in a laboratory of Saitama University
used in the experiment can produce horizontal vibration in a single-axis. Subjects sat on analuminum-framed seat mounted on the shaker platform whose size was 800 × 800 mm. The seat was set
to expose subjects vibrations in the lateral direction. The horizontal acceleration of the seat surface
was measured with a uniaxial piezoelectric accelerometer, RION PV -87. A charge amplifier, RION
UV-06, was used for the amplification of signals from the accelerometer. A Vibration Level Meter,
RION VM-53A, was used to measure the accelerations at the shaker platform in three orthogonal
directions, which showed that cross-axis accelerations were negligible. Signals from all transducers
were recorded in a PC-based data acquisition system, National Instruments Corporation, NI
cDAQ-9178 and NI 9234. Figure 1 shows the electrodynamic shaker used in the experiment.

Figure 1 – Electrodynamic shaker
2.2 Subjects
The twenty-five subjects (14 male and 11 female), with median age 22 years (range 20 - 24 years),
stature 168 cm (range 151 - 179 cm), and weight 56 kg (range 43 -92 kg) participated in the experiment.
They were all students of Saitama University. The experiment was approved by the HumanExperimentation Safety and Ethics Committee of the Saitama University. Informed consent toparticipate in the experiment was given by all subjects.
2.3 Input stimuli
Input stimulus used in the experiment consisted of 12 types of vibration measured in realbuildings and 2 types of sinusoidal vibration. The actual vibrations measured within houses werecaused by external causes such as road traffic and railways. The frequency of sinusoidal vibration
selected at 4Hz and 8Hz, which were determined based on the dynamic characteristics of ordinary
residential buildings in Japan. The vibration duration varied in the range shorter than 35 s. The
amplitude was adjusted so that the evaluation value by VDV of each input stimulus become equalinterval by the logarithmic law, because the previous study showed the most appropriate
correspondence with the subjective responses with the evaluation determined by VDV (4). For
sinusoidal vibration, the frequency-weighted acceleration was adjusted by a factor of 2 (0.022, 0.011,0.043, 0.086 m/s 2 at 4 Hz) and the duration by a factor of 4 (0.5, 2, 8 s). The magnitude of theacceleration amplitude was adjusted to be 0.11 - 2.02 m/s 2 so that the acceleration amplitude was in
the range which can occur in an actual building. A total of 68 types of vibrations, 20 types forsinusoidal vibration and 48 types for actual vibration, were prepared. Figure 2 shows examples of
input acceleration.

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(a)

Road traffic(b)Elevated Road(c)Railway(d)

Shinkansen(e) Sinusoidal (4 Hz - 8 s)
Figure 2 – Example of input vibrations

2.4 Measurement of subjective responses
The subjects were asked to assume that they sat down on a seat in a living room. They were exposedto the input vibrations and asked to rate those vibrations using the rating scale for subjective
magnitude of vibration, concern and discomfort.
Category scales based on the method of psychological measurement was adopted to rate thesubjective magnitude of vibration, concern vibration and vibration discomfort. These rating scales
were set up as 7-step category rating scales with semantic labels, which were Japanese adverbialexpressions, for the evaluation of building vibration. For example, for each subjective scale, the labelof the top category 1 contains the adverb corresponding to “Extremely” and the lowest category 7
contains the adverb corresponding to “Not at all”.
2.5 Evaluation method of vibration
The several domestic and international evaluation methods of environmental vibration wereapplied to the accelerations measured in the experiment.
2.5.1 Evaluation of Habitability, AIJESThe Evaluation of Habitability, AIJES was defined in AIJES-V001-2018 (3). The vibration
acceleration measured at floor surface in a building is plotted on criteria curve after 1/3 octave
frequency analysis, and the evaluation is carried out at the maximum acceleration of main vibration
components. In the case of unsteady vibration, the maximum value of acceleration can be reduced by
calculating the effect of duration of vibration by 1/4 power.

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2.5.2 Maximum Transient Vibration, MTVVThe Maximum Transient Vibration, MTVV, defined in ISO 2631-1 and -2 (1,2), was calculated by:
MTVV max[aw (t0 )](1)

aW (t0 )ª 1 t0º1 / 22«¬W ³t0 W ^aw (] )` d] »¼(2)Here, the acceleration was frequency-weighted by Wd weighting defined in ISO ISO 2631-1 (1).
The integration time τ was 1.0 s.
2.5.3 Vibration Dose Value, VDVThe Vibration Dose Value, VDV, was defined in ISO 2631-1 and -2 (1,2), was calculated by:

VDVª T ^a (] )`4 d] º1/ 4«¬ ³0 w»¼(3)where T is the duration of vibration.
2.5.3 Root Mean Square, RMS
The Root Mean Square, RMS, was calculated by:1Τ21 T(4)ܴMS= ቈ න ሼaw ሺζሻሽ2 dζ቉
T 0In this study, the vibration duration T in the calculation was the same for all vibration stimuli.
Therefore, RMS was essentially equivalent to the time-averaged value of VDV with the power of two,instead of fourth power, and used for investigating the effect of duration of vibration.

3. Results
3.1 Evaluation of influence of vibration duration and frequency weighting
For investigating the influence of the duration of vibration and the frequency weighting
characteristics, Figure 3 shows the correspondence between subjective responses and all evaluation
values for sinusoidal vibrations only using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.
In the magnitude scale, MTVV which is the maximum value evaluation, shows that the correlationis the strongest. In discomfort scale, VDV which considers the duration of the vibration in the 1/4
power, shows the strongest correlation. In any subjective responses, the evaluation of AIJES shows
the strong correlation. On the other hand, RMS shows the weakest correlation among all theevaluated values.

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Figure 4 shows the correspondence between the subjective response and the evaluation value. Asa representative, it shows the relationship between magnitude scale and MTVV, and discomfort scaleand VDV. The evaluation values and subjective response are presented by the medians of 25 subjects.
The figures show a tendency that the subjective response becomes stronger as the evaluation value
increases, as expected. In addition, a similar tendency is observed in the results for 4 Hz and 8 Hz.
This suggests that Wd frequency-weighting can adequately evaluate the subjective responses underconsideration in this study for vibrations at two frequencies used.

(a) Maguitude scale(b) Discomfort scale
Figure 4 – Relation between subjective response and metrics of sinusoidal vibration
㸦ࠐ:4 Hz - 0.5 s㸪‫ڹ‬㸸4 Hz - 2 s, ‫ڧ‬㸸4 Hz - 8 s, ‫ە‬㸸4 Hz - 0.5 s㸪‫ڸ‬㸸8 Hz - 2 s, ‫ڦ‬㸸8 Hz - 8 s㸧

3.2 Relation between subjective responses and all metrics
Figure 5 shows the Spearman's rank correlation coefficients between the subjective responses inthis experiment and all the metrics for real vibrations only and all input stimuli. In addition, the results
for sinusoidal vibrations, shown in Figure 4, are also shown for comparison.
The correlation of MTVV is the strongest with the magnitude scale of the sinusoidal vibration, but
the correlation is weak in the real vibration. VDV has a strong correlation with the subjective
magnitude irrespective of the type of input stimulus. VDV also showed the strongest correlation withthe discomfort scale for any input stimuli. Similar results were able to be observed even withconcern scale. The above results suggest that VDV is the most appropriate evaluation value among
the evaluation values examined in this study.

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Figure 5 – Comparison of Spearman's rank correlation coefficients on this experiment
Figure 6 shows the relationship between VDV with Wd frequency weighting and subjective
responses in the magnitude scale and discomfort scale measured in this experiment. In the figure, ρaand ρ r represent the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient for all input stimuli and real vibrations.
It can be seen that the correspondence between VDV and the subjective response is good even for theactual vibration whose acceleration amplitude and frequency content change with time. In addition,
it agrees well with the result of the sinusoidal vibration. It is, therefore, considered that VDV with
Wd frequency weighting is appropriate as an evaluation for the subjective responses to horizontal3641

building vibrations in small-scale residential building induced by road traffic and railways .

(a) Maguitude scale(b) Discomfort scale
Figure 6 – Relation between subjective response and metrics of all input stimuli
㸦ࠐ:Road㸪‫ە‬㸸Elevated road㸪‫ڧ‬㸸Conventional railway㸪‫ڦ‬㸸Shinkansen㸪‫ۍ‬㸸Freight train㸪‫ڹ‬㸸4 Hz㸪‫ڸ‬㸸8 Hz㸧

4. CONCLUSIONSThis study examined the evaluation method of environmental vibration based on the subjective
responses for magnitude, concern and discomfort to horizontal building vibration caused by external
vibration source such as road traffic and railway. It was found that VDV considering the duration ofvibration by 1⁄4 power evaluated the subjective response most appropriately for the sinusoidal
vibration and various actual vibrations. It turned out that Wd frequency weighting was able to evaluate
properly the vibration with different frequency components in horizontal vibrations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors were grateful to Mr. Ryoga Takehiro for his assistance in the experiment conducted inthis study.

REFERENCES
1. ISO 2631-1㸸1997. Mechanical Vibration and Shock ̽ Evaluation of Human Exposure to Whole-bodyVibration ̽ Part 1: General Requirements. International Standard.
2. ISO 2631-2㸸2003. Mechanical Vibration and Shock ̽ Evaluation of Human Exposure to Whole-bodyVibration ̽ Part 2: Vibration in Buildings (1 Hz to 80 Hz).
3. Architectural Institute of Japan. Standard for the Evaluation of Habitability to Building Vibration.
AIJES-V001-2018, 2018.11 (in Japanese).
4. Hayashi K, Matsumoto Y, Kano H. An Experimental Investigation of Applicability of Evaluation
Methods Considering Duration for Subjective Responses to Horizontal Vibrations. Journal ofEnvironmental Engineering (Transactions of AIJ), Vol.83, No.743, p.11-19, 2018. (in Japanese)

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