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Does your
Convention Center Shake, Rattle and Roll?
At first, it may seem fine to see these words associated with
a convention center ballroom. That is, if we are talking about
the people dancing and not the floor! Several facilities with
long span ballroom floors, commonly found in convention
centers because of their placement above exposition halls,
have had some complaints and concerns about perceptible motion
when people were dancing. Floor vibration has been known to
make ceiling attachments sway, make drinks slosh and generally
make people uneasy. To address this issue, SMG and Penn State
University, with funding from the National Science Foundation,
have teamed up to study the structural design of long span
ballroom floors.
It is very important to understand that this is almost never a
real issue of safety, but rather one of discomfort and
perception. In other words, we are not the least bit concerned
that floors with perceptible levels of vibration are going to
fall down. We are very concerned, however, that people think
they might! Presently, design methods do exist to check if a
floor will be prone to excessive levels of vibration from
dancing crowds. In the case of long span floors, it is nearly
impossible to meet the available criteria for acceptability.
When the criteria are satisfied, the result is often a
prohibitively high cost for the structural system. The issue
at hand is then cost verses performance and where to draw the
line. Through a research effort, headed by Dr. Linda Hannigan,
Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering at Penn
State, we will attempt to better understand exactly where to
draw this line.
The method of investigation will be by case study, and this is
where SMG comes in, whereby every convention center under the
management of SMG will be reviewed with respect to this issue.
Facilities with long span ballroom floors will be identified
and assessed with respect to design and perception. To do
this, the researchers will need architectural and structural
plans and in some cases, will need to make site visits to
collect information and measurements. This will obviously take
some cooperation on the part of the convention center
operators. The end result will hopefully be a clearer
resolution to this issue and better facilities for everyone to
enjoy.
For more information and/or to participate in this study,
please contact: Bryan Hayden, Executive Director of Operations
Development, SMG, at 215-592-6635 or
bhayden@smgworld.com.
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