Experimental Verification of the Dynamic Performance of a Footbridge Under High Pedestrian Densities

Although the dynamic performance of footbridges under high crowd densities is often imperative for the design, official standards and guidelines are currently forced to rely on load models that are oversimplified and based on numerous assumptions that remain to be validated. The present contribution presents a unique case where the dynamic performance of a footbridge under high pedestrian densities is verified experimentally. The dynamic characteristics of the empty structure and the structure occupied by a large number of persons standing still are identified. A clear decrease in effective frequency and an increase in effective damping ratio is observed for an increasing number of persons on the deck. In addition, the dynamic performance under high pedestrian densities is observed. It is shown that the maximum acceleration levels predicted by the design guides are two times larger than the experimental observations.

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