Footbridge Pedestrian Vibration

The UK Highways Agency has commissioned two companion studies for the review of the dynamic sensitivity of footbridges. As part of their contribution to this work, Flint & Neill Partnership have undertaken a fairly extensive theoretical review of the combined subjects of pedestrian loading, response prediction and user perception of bridge motion. The results of this study form the basis for a new approach to the assessment of the dynamic responses of footbridges, and aspects of which are being presented in a related papers at this conference.

This paper presents of some of the background to the development the design strategy developed for the prediction of vertical responses. The material presented in this paper serves two purposes (a) it provides useful background in order to assist practicing engineers to better understand a few of the many important theoretical issues, and (b) it provides an example of a simple analysis algorithm (able to be implemented in a spreadsheet) that, in many cases, will enable engineers to calculate pedestrian dynamic responses with the same precision as that of a full time history analysis.