Why do sliding doors in Japan make a one knock sound especially at night?

Does it have something to do with the temperature and it’s affecting my sliding door?
My building is about 30 years old, it doesn’t look very old. I’m on the second floor and there are 3 floors in this building. It’s 2DK and the tatami and western style rooms are separated with 2 sliding door panels. My sliding doors are not the paper type kind but it’s wooden. It makes a one knock/thud/tapping sound at random times at night and the knocking always feels like it’s coming from outside the room where i sleep (i sleep in the tatami room). Not a shaking sound that could be caused by cars outside in some apartments. Is there a scientific explanation to this? What are the factors that could result to this random sounds at night? It’s been happening at least once every night for the past week. It happened once in summer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1af2otj/why_do_sliding_doors_in_japan_make_a_one_knock/

8 comments
  1. It’s likely a draft due to a temperature difference, or air pressure difference from an open vent/window, between the two rooms, shaking them as it passes through. You can put a small, or large, strip of insulation foam where they overlap to reduce the noise.

    Edit: it could be the doors hitting each other or the doors shaking in their tracks. You’ll need to determine that first to decide where to put the foam.

  2. Does your door have the anti-slam mechanism built into it where it slows down at the very end and quietly closes?

  3. Yes, should be just thermal expansion effect on wood/metal material. They expand/contract based on humidity/temperature difference.

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