Modeling of crowd load in vertical direction using biodynamic model for pedestrians crossing footbridges

Abstract

In the analysis of vibration of footbridges in vertical direction, for crowd situations, there is evidence in the literature that the whole effect of pedestrian action is not well modeled when applying current force-only models to represent such an action. In these models, the action of each pedestrian is represented by a pulsating force applied on the structure. In this paper, a crowd load model is proposed for sparse and dense crowds (with densities up to around 1.0 pedestrian/m2) in which biodynamic models are added to represent the whole action of pedestrians. The focus of the investigation is on vibration effects in vertical direction. Comparisons with measurements on a prototype footbridge were carried out and made it possible to identify differences in the structural response when applying force-only and force-biodynamic models to represent the pedestrian action. The latter (proposed) model resulted in a better agreement with the measurements.