A Theory Treatment of Pedestrian-Induced Lateral Vibration of Structure

Abstract

The lateral excessive sway motion caused by pedestrian traffic has attracted great public attention in the past decades years. However, the theories about exploring the effect of pedestrian on the lateral dynamic properties of structure are scarce. The new contribution of this paper is that a new pedestrian-structure system is proposed for exploring the effect of human on structural dynamic properties based on a sway assumption. Study shows that pedestrian deteriorates the natural frequency of structure and improves structural damping. The influence tendencies of pedestrian on structure can be supported by measurements. The further parametric study shows that the changes of human dynamic parameters have some evident impacts on structural dynamic performances. For example, the increase of leg damping can trigger an improvement of structural damping capacity. In addition, the walking step frequency closing structural harmonic natural frequency can incur the worst response. The increase of step width deteriorates lateral vibration and structural frequency but can slightly improve structural damping. One of essential reasons influencing structural lateral dynamic properties is the dynamic human system including body mass, damping, stiffness, and its motion behavior such as step frequency. This theory is proposed to analyze how pedestrian alters the lateral dynamic performances on those sensitive structures such as the footbridges or stadium bleachers. For example, how the variation of step width influences the change of natural frequency of structure?