Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
1
Vibration Engineering Section
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, The University of Sheffield
Sir Frederick Mappin Building, Mappin Street, Sheffield, S1 3JD, UK
2
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Av. Camilo José Cela s/n, Ciudad Real, 13071, Spain
ABSTRACT
Civil engineering structures that accommodate pedestrians, such as footbridges and floors, could be exposed to
excessive vibrations under walking-induced dynamic excitation. Since humans are quite sensitive vibration
receivers, this situation leads to pedestrians’ interaction with the structure. For laterally moving structure, the
interaction often forces synchronisation of crowd’s walking frequency with the structural oscillating frequency,
leading to a dramatic increase of vibration response; a phenomenon that made the Millennium Bridge in London
and Solférino Passerelle in Paris famous, although for unintended reasons. While there is a general agreement
that crowd of pedestrians could act as negative dampers when walking across laterally moving surface, the
interaction of the same crowd with the vertically moving surface is far less understood. This paper aims to shed
some light on the latter issue by conducting the modal testing of a footbridge for three different setups: 1) empty
structure, 2) bridge occupied by a passive (i.e. standing) crowd and 3) the bridge occupied by an active (i.e.
walking) crowd. The dynamic properties of the three systems have been identified and compared. The results
have shown that the intrinsic damping of the human-structure system, occupied either by passive or active crowd,
was much larger than for the empty structure. Therefore, the human presence on the structure increased the
dampening potential of the vibrating system and mitigated the vibration response of the structure.
1 INTRODUCTION
Problems with excessive vibration that have occurred on some high profile structures in recent years while they
were exposed to human-induced dynamic loading – the Millennium Bridge in London [1], Solférino passerelle in
Paris [2], the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff [3], Brooklyn Bridge in New York during the blackout [4] are only some
examples – triggered a lot of research into modelling the human-induced loads (such as walking, jumping,
swaying, etc.) and estimation of the responses they generate. Some advances in this area have already been
made [1, 5-13]. However, what is still under researched and not well understood is the interaction between people
and perceptibly moving structure. This interaction occurs because humans are quite sensitive vibration receivers
and highly complex dynamic systems [14]. As such, they tend to change their behaviour when they perceive
strong structural vibrations in both lateral and vertical directions.
There are at least two approaches to analysing the human-structure interaction (HSI) phenomenon. The first
approach investigates the changes in the dynamic force that occur due to people’s either conscious or
unconscious changes in behaviour as reaction to being supported by a perceptibly oscillating structure. This
approach was used by Yao et al. [15] for studying the jumping force. They found that people have difficulties in
timing their jumping if the structure moves perceptibly and that the magnitude of the jumping force drops in the
region of the resonant and near resonant frequencies. Similarly, it was found that when people perceive strong
vertical vibration while crossing footbridges, they could ‘lose’ their natural step which again leads to reduction in
the magnitude of the walking force [16].
The second approach to HSI looks into the influence of people’s presence on the structure on dynamic properties
of the human-structure system, and consequently on the structural response. For example, strong lateral vibration
of the Millennium Bridge was explained as a consequence of negative damping induced into the structure by
people walking in a manner to synchronise themselves with the structure [1]. On the other hand, it is well known
now that the influence of people standing on a vertically vibrating structure could be accounted for as additional
damping to the system [17]. However, when considering people that walk over a vertically oscillating structure,
there are only some indications that these pedestrians, too, have potential to increase the damping of the system
[18-20], and this has not yet been investigated in detail.
This paper is probably the first study that investigates the interaction of walking people with the vertically moving
structure in a systematic manner. For this, the second approach to HSI was employed and the contribution of
walking people to the increase in the system damping was quantified on a simple footbridge structure. For
comparison, the influence of standing people was also studied. The effort of the investigators was concentrated
on the fundamental vibration mode only. Namely, this mode at around 4.5 Hz was the only structural mode of
vibration below 15 Hz. As such, this mode is to be most influenced by peoples’ presence due to its low frequency
and largest contribution to the total vibration response.
The first part of the paper describes the structure investigated and its dynamic properties identified in a modal
testing exercise. Then the nonlinear behaviour of the fundamental vibration mode is investigated. After this,
testing of the structure occupied by either walking or standing people is described and results are presented.
Finally, the results are summarised and discussed.
2 EMPTY STRUCTURE
This section describes the structure used in the experiments and its modal properties as identified in modal
testing programme designed for measuring frequency response function (FRF) of the system. To check if the
structural dynamic properties of the first vibration mode depend on the response level, the free decay of the
response in this vibration mode was also analysed.
2.1 Description of the structure
The structure investigated resides in a laboratory at Sheffield University. It is a small prestressed reinforced
concrete footbridge spanning 10.8 m with 2.0 m wide deck. The bridge is a simple beam structure, with knife edge
supports along its edges (Figure 1). The bridge weighs about 15000 kg.
Plan view
2.0m
10.8m
11.2m
0.275m
Elevation
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
2x1.0m=2.0m
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
8x1.35m=10.8m
Figure 2: Measurement grid for FRF-based modal testing and the walking path.
Mode 3 (rocking-torsion): 26.1 Hz, 0.88% Mode 4 (torsion): 28.7 Hz, 1.42%
0.50
0.45 4.42
0.40
128.8A+32.76
Damping= 3 2
A -5.423A +183A+91.55
0.35 4.40
0.30
0.25 4.38
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
(a) 2
(b)
Acceleration amplitude A [m/s ] Acceleration amplitude A [m/s ]
2
Figure 5: (a) The damping ratio and (b) natural frequency of the fundamental vibration mode as a function of
response amplitude.
0.5m
10 6,10 2,4,6, 6,10 10
10
0.5m
4 4
0.5m
10 6,10 2,4,6, 6,10 10
10
0.5m
1.35m 1.35m
2.70m 2.70m
5.40m 5.40m
Figure 7: Footbridge ready for crowd tests (left) and setup with an accelerometer and a shaker at TP106 beneath
the slab (right).
5.4m 5.4m
1.0m
300
200
-100
10
-200
-300
-400 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 2 4 6 8 10
(a) Time [s] (b) Frequency [Hz]
1.5 0.12
1.0
Acceleration at TP106 [m/s2]
0.0
-0.5 0.04
-1.0
-1.5 0.00
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 2 4 6 8 10
(c) Time [s] (d) Frequency [Hz]
Figure 9: (a) Time domain and (b) frequency domain representation of the chirp excitation and the corresponding
(c) time and (d) frequency domain representation of the acceleration response at TP106 during a 64s data block.
The data were acquired in a test with six walking people.
3.2 FRFs acquired during tests with standing and walking crowd
For each test (either with active or passive people) eight FRFs (one per response point) were acquired. However,
in the process of identification of modal properties only the point mobility (FRF between force at TP106 and the
acceleration response at the same point) was used. An example of acquired (averaged) point FRFs for tests with
six people walking and six people standing is shown in Figure 10 (dashed lines). Then a series of analytical FRF
functions was generated for different combinations of modal mass, damping ratio and natural frequency. The
resolution used for these three parameters was 100 kg, 0.02% and 0.01 Hz, respectively. The parameters of best
analytical fit to measured FRF magnitude were identified as those producing the least square error. The best fits
for the measured data presented in Figure 10 are shown in the same figure as solid lines. It can be seen that the
analytical model matches the experimental one quite well, even for data representing the phase of FRF, although
these data were not employed during the modelling process. This gives confidence that the methodology used is
robust, and could be used for identification of modal properties.
The described methodology was used for estimation of modal parameters of human-structure systems exposed to
two, four, six and ten people either walking or standing. The results for the damping ratio and natural frequency,
including those for the empty footbridge, are summarised in Table 1, while FRF models are shown in Figure 11.
Note that modal properties of the empty slab are different from those shown in Figure 4. This is because this time
the parameter identification for the empty slab was done using FRF measurements of the same kind as those for
occupied structure, while the results presented in Figure 4 are based on tests employing random excitation that
generates lower level responses compared with those generated by the chirp excitation.
The most significant observation is that both walking and standing people increased the damping of the system,
with the effect more pronounced for standing people. This effect is not only obvious in the reduction of the FRF
peak, increase of the FRF width (Figure 11a) and the decrease of the slope in FRF phase (Figure 11b) but also in
the reduction of the peak response value compared with the peak response of the empty structure (Table 1). Note
that changes in damping properties when people were present on the structures are an order of magnitude larger
than due to nonlinearities of the empty structure, making it clear that these changes were caused by people’s
presence.
3.5 160
FRF magnitude [(m/s )/N]
6 people 6 people
2.0
6 people 80 6 people
1.5 standing standing
1.0 40
0.5
0.0 0
3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5
(a) (b) Frequency [Hz]
Frequency [Hz]
Figure 10: Measured and modelled (a) magnitude and (b) phase of FRF for tests with six people walking and
standing on the footbridge.
10 200
empty slab
empty slab
2 people
8 160 walking
FRF magnitude [(m/s )/N]
2 people
walking 2 people
FRF phase [degree]
4 people
2
standing
walking
6 120 4 people
standing
4 people
2 people walking 6 people 6 people
standing standing walking
4 80
6 people
4 people 10 people
walking
standing standing
10 people 10 people
6 people walking
2 standing walking 40
10 people
standing
0 0
3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5
(a) (b) Frequency [Hz]
Frequency [Hz]
Figure 11: (a) Magnitude and (b) phase of FRFs for human-structure system including various numbers of people.
4 DISCUSSION
Table 1 shows that the presence of humans on the structure, either in passive or active form, increased the
damping of the new human-structure system compared with the damping of the empty structure. This increase
was significant not only for configurations including people standing on the structure but also for those tests with
walking people (Figure 12). This suggests that it would be useful and cost effective to account for the increased
damping in vibration serviceability design of structures exposed to human occupancy.
4.0
standing
walking
3.5
3.0
Damping ratio [%]
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0 2 4 6 8 10
Number of people
Figure 12: Damping ratio of the system as a function of the number of people and their activity (standing or
walking).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank to students and staff of the University of Sheffield who took part in the testing
programme: Eunice Lawton, Darren Jones, Jonathan Wood, Vitomir Racic, Donald Nyawako, Tuan Norhayati
Tuan Chik, Mohammad Muaz Aldimashki, Alkiviadis Alexakis, Ahmed Babiker, Gbenga Oludotun, Chris Todd and
Mark Foster. Also the authors acknowledge the financial support of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC) under the grant reference GR/T03000/01 (Stochastic Approach to Human-Structure
Dynamic Interaction) as well as Conserjería de Educación y Ciencia of Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La
Mancha and European Social Fund.
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