Variability study on pedestrian forces exerted on slender structures

Pedestrian induced forces has become an important research topic. Effects produced on slender structures such as footbridges and high-frequency floors are considered an essential factor in structural design, especially regarding serviceability and comfort issues. Pedestrian induced forces could be characterized by several parameters associated to human walking process. Focusing on vertical forces, the main goal of this Master Thesis is to suitably determine the influence of each parameter into the overall dynamical response. Parameters such as signal period and amplitude are considered on this variability study. To perform this sensitivity analysis, synthetical force signals have been developed. On each force signal a walking parameter is identified as the leading one, letting its own variability w.r.t. other parameters involved. Several force models are proposed to determine parameters influence on a single degree of freedom (S.D.O.F.) system. Two procedures where proposed based on the synthetical signal generation. The first one, called “conceptual” which creates simple samples associated to common values detected on real timeseries. On the other hand, the “empirical” process is based on direct sample extraction from measured force timeseries. All data collected and analysed comes from measured ground reaction forces (GRFs) extracted at Light Structures Laboratory associated to University of Sheffield, kindly acknowledged.