Vibration serviceability of pultruded GFRP sandwich panel floor systems

GFRP composites provides tremendous benefits when considered as construction material for building structures and its constituent floor system. Such benefits includes lower structural self-weight and increased durability. Recently a new innovative GFRP sandwich panel has been proposed as alternative to conventional concrete slab. The GFRP sandwich panel is lightweight and relatively stiff. However due to its lightweight and low damping properties, vibration serviceability problems may arise. Hence, this research was undertaken to explore the vibration serviceability performance of the bespoke GFRP sandwich panel floors under human excitation. The results show that traditional forms of assessment are not applicable and new methods are proposed.