Design procedure for the development of new floating floors to improve comfort on ships

The paper presents a procedure developed for designing new floating floors for marine applications. The procedure aims at the improvement of the capability of a new floating floor to isolate structure borne noise. After an introduction to the theoretical background on which this procedure is built, the authors present the results obtained applying the developed procedure to a case study. The procedure includes numerical Finite Element simulations and experimental tests. The simulations aim at the optimization of the resilient material used to decouple the upper floor from the structures. The optimized configurations are then built and tested in laboratory. These tests allow the researchers to identify the floating floor resonances and to evaluate their effect on the Transmission Loss levels. The results of the research activity show the effectiveness of the developed procedure and highlight the importance of the experimental tests to validate the outcomes of the simulations.