HUMAN EXPOSURE TO VIBRATION IN BUILDINGS (DIN 4150-2:1999-06 & DIN 45669-1:1995-06)
By Dr Colin Mercer, Technical Director, Prosig
Standards DIN 4150-2:1999-06 and DIN 45669-1:1995-06 provide a means of assessing the effect on human beings of vibration caused by vehicle traffic, trains both above and below ground, construction work and occasional impulsive type vibration caused by, say, blasting and the like.
DIN 45669-1 describes the signal processing actions and DIN 4150-2 details how these are used. Provisions are included for day or night levels and for five categories of building:
- Industrial
- Predominantly Commercial
- Mixed Commercial and Residential
- Residential
- Special Areas such as Hospitals
Where relevant the standards also make provision for rest periods in the daytime by giving these twice the importance. It is important therefore that the time of day at which recordings are made is kept with the data as is done with the Prosig P8000 series. The Prosig DATS software will then automatically analyse data into the three categories: Day, Rest Period and Night.
As well as computing the severity level and comparing it against the relevant limits then, if the level is too high when assessed on the existing exposure duration, it will also compute the permitted exposure time to meet the standard.
DIN 45669 gives two classes of accuracy for amplitude and phase and the computed values for specific test signals. These are Class 1 and Class 2 with Class 1 being the tightest requirement. The Prosig P8000 hardware and DATS software meets Class 1 requirements.
