Efficacy of high-performance ceiling systems

A current approach to try to solve a low frequency impact-induced structure-borne noise issue in lightweight woodframe buildings has been the application of a resilient ceiling suspended by one-inch deflection spring hangers. While this system has been lab tested it was only compared to an assembly with no isolation in which the gypsum board was directly attached to the bottom of the joists. The authors have repeated the testing of one-inch deflection ceiling hangers in the same lab but this time they compared it to the same isolators with the springs removed, standard resilient sound clips and other ceiling isolation systems. Relative performance differences of the isolation systems will be presented along with transmissibility, static stiffness, dynamic stiffness and damping measurements of each isolation element. A few theories as to why the systems behave the way they do will also be presented.