Impact Sound Transmission

Identify your products response to impact noise and how it is transferred from one room to the space below. Dealing with single or multi-family dwellings, where the presence of people in a room above can be detected daily through footsteps or the dropping of objects, results in the necessity to verify the ability of your product to mitigate those sounds.

Take advantage of North America’s most advanced acoustical test lab. With extensive experience testing to ANSI, ASTM, and ISO standards, we have the proficiency you need to help determine the level of impact sound transmission of your products.

What is Impact Sound Transmission?

Impact sound transmission is a measurement of how much impact vibrational noise passes through a building floor/ceiling partition. The impact sound transmission of a partition is measured by utilizing a standard tapping machine (pictured above) to create a steady source of impact vibration on the floor surface, and measuring the sound pressure levels (SPLs) in the room directly below the partition.

Impact Sound Transmission Ratings:

Impact Insulation Class (IIC): A single number rating used to evaluate the effectiveness of a floor/ceiling system at reducing both high-frequency and low-frequency impact sound transmission in a laboratory. This rating evaluates the performance of an entire floor/ceiling system.

High-Frequency Impact Insulation Class (HIIC): A single number rating used to evaluate the effectiveness of floor systems at reducing high-frequency impact sound transmission in a laboratory. Through years of data, it has become apparent that floor toppings and underlayments have a much greater effect on the high-frequency IIC performance of a floor/ceiling system. The HIIC rating was developed to more-accurately evaluate the variances in flooring and underlayment performance that isn’t always apparent in IIC ratings.

Delta Impact Insulation Class (Delta IIC): A single number rating used to evaluate the effectiveness of a floor topping at improving IIC performance. This test is run exclusively on a concrete slab, and is a comparison between the IIC performance of the slab itself and the IIC performance of the slab with the floor topping. The difference between the two IIC ratings is used to determine the Delta IIC – a representation of the improvement provided by addition of the floor topping to the system.

For Information on field testing for Apparent Impact Isolation Class (AIIC) ratings, click here.

Which types of products require consideration of impact sound performance?