Investigation of heavy-soft impact noise transmission in fitness facilities

Fitness applications within a mixed-use building can disturb other occupants of the building and, as a result, require assessment and mitigation. There are not currently established standards for conducting repeatable measurement of noise or vibration from fitness activities. The focus of recent work in heavy impacts has been weights, as these are frequently used and typically expected to represent the worst-case scenario. However, fitness programs encompass a variety of activities that are dissimilar from heavy weight impacts, such as use of the human body as an impact source (running, jumping, and dropping) and use of soft and limp materials as an impact source (ropes, medicine balls). This paper presents measurement and application of the predictive methods developed for a heavy rigid impact source to a heavy soft impact source for comparison.