Building Vibration Isolation

Concept design consultancy through to full solution manufacture and installation assurance

As cities and urban areas expand and evolve and quality of life improves, the need to protect people from groundborne and structure-borne noise and vibration increases. Farrat’s engineers on a mission pride themselves in supporting developers, engineers and contractors deliver ambitious, complex, brownfield, over or near rail site schemes with minimal impact to programme or the original architectural intent.

Building Acoustics and Vibration Isolation Quality

As a proud British manufacturer, Farrat design and manufacture a comprehensive range of ever improving standard and bespoke products; ranging from individual acoustic bearings through to complete building isolation systems (BIS).

Farrat Isolevel Ltd operates an ISO 9001:2015 approved Quality Assurance System and ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management Standard, which all Building Vibration Isolation solutions are manufactured under.

Building acoustics

Watch video

Typical applications

Typical applications are in Urban Living including Residential (including super-prime, high rise apartment buildings, social housing, assisted living and care homes, student accommodation, private residences etc), Hotels, offices, university buildings & research facilities each of which have their own specific requirements and priorities.

Beyond protection from groundborne noise, the products, systems, solutions and knowledge we have built up over the years position us as a key partner in supporting the construction industry achieve its net-zero aims by finding solutions to re-use existing structures, construct lighter, resource efficient buildings using new material combinations, and develop modern methods of construction. We are experts at achieving the performance specifications as efficiently as possible whilst ensuring the solutions are robust, easy to install and will last the life of the building.

Each building, its surroundings and the client’s requirements are unique which means we need to start with an open mind

Standard products

Farrat manufactures a wide range of standard products including:

Laminated Natural Rubber (LNR)

Vibration Isolation Bearings, designed, manufactured and tested to EN 1337-3:2005 Structural bearings - Part 3: Elastomeric bearings with additional quality control measures including full traceability and 100% testing up to ULS load. Range capacity from 75kN up to 4,589kN ULS.

VI Shear Keys

Standardised units encompassing an LNR Bearing for vertical support and Hybrid Bearings as lateral restraints housed within optimised CE marked fabricated steel housings for easy, fast installation and reliable long-term performance

VI Bearing Assemblies

CE marked, steel assemblies that contain elastomeric isolation bearings along with other features such as; levelling plates, fail-safes, and/or load spreading elements. Farrat bearing assemblies can also incorporate disproportionate collapse and horizontal load restraint measures such as acoustically isolated vertical ties and lateral restraints.

Vibration Isolation Materials

High performance elastomeric materials manufactured by Farrat for performance, versatility and longevity.

VFT System

Innovative permanent formwork solution developed by Farrat to achieve low natural frequency isolation (down to 7Hz) for ground bearing floor slabs.

Isofoam Lateral Isolation

High performance foam used to separate isolated from non-isolated structures. Isofoam can accommodate up to 2m deep concrete pours.

Expert Design Support

Farrat’s design principles and products provide an adaptable and flexible way of incorporating vibration control into building structures, with the aim to achieve the best combined system performance of load bearing capacity, structural integrity, vibration control and buildability.

The success of a building isolation project is not just reliant on the performance of the isolation bearings but also requires consideration of the entire building design including:

Structural modelling to achieve an integrated design between the structure and the isolation bearings.
Robust structural design to take disproportionate collapse and column effective length into account.
Effective structural and architectural detailing of all interfaces between isolated and non-isolated elements (may be structural internal fit out or services)
A construction methodology that minimises risk, time and cost

Collaborative Contractor Support

All Farrat products are designed for maximum performance while at the same time being practical and quick to install.

Our aim is to provide a service to the contractor that includes:

The success of a building isolation project is not just reliant on the performance of the isolation bearings but also requires consideration of the entire building design including:

Guidance on overall building design and construction
Planning and co-ordination with the contractor to ensure products can be unloaded from the delivery wagon and efficiently transported to the work area
Well-thought through installation methodologies that take into account location specific constraints with clear and comprehensive installation instructions / drawings
Installation briefings, on-site support and inspections

Building acoustics

Watch video

Downloads

We invite you to download and review documents to gain a better understanding of some of the challenges involved and how Farrat can support right through from the ‘Do we need to isolate the building?’ through to completion and handover.

Building Vibration Isolation

PDF • 4 MB

View Download

ICSV27 Beyond Natural Frequency

PDF • 2 MB

View Download

ICSV24 Base Isolated Buildings

PDF • 2 MB

View Download

R&D

Lightweight structures are more susceptible to vibration and/or that require research to be able to predict how vibration will manifest itself within structures and to develop new solutions to control structural dynamics issues in new designs and material combinations. Ongoing research includes:

Perpetual R&D to optimise our product portfolio and ensure we are the industry leader in precise prediction of how our materials behave under different load and environmental conditions.
Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Salford’s Acoustics department to develop, implement and validate a cutting-edge methodology to predict the vibro-acoustic response of buildings that incorporate vibration control.
A PhD within the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Sustainable Sound Futures
Farrat are key stakeholders in the upcoming EPSRC funded Noise Network Plus aimed at Engineering a Quieter Future.

We welcome opportunities to support projects and initiatives aimed at improving quality of urban life, facilitating initiatives that aim to achieve net-zero in the built environment and to support young talent, particularly those with social mobility challenges.

Video Case Studies

As well as the detailed case studies included in Reference Projects here are animated videos showing two approaches to buildings isolated from their piled foundations.

Both have specialised designs under the cores to control shear and rotational movement from wind forces. The design principles can be adapted to different building designs all with the goal of ending up with an efficient and robust design that is easy and fast to install, doesn’t need maintenance and will last the life of the building.

Anthology Deptford Foundry, London

Construction of a 10Hz building isolation system engineered and manufactured by Farrat, for the Anthology Deptford Foundry (ADF) development in London.

This video illustrates building components used to isolate three six-storey blocks.