Abstract—Several structures are subjected to human loading, for example, floors, footbridges, stadium, etc. In fact, the aesthetic demand of human beings and recent advances in material and fabrication technologies have enabled the design and construction of stylish, light and slender long span structures such as bridges,stadiums, floors, etc. Consequently the modern structures have become flexible and prone to human induced vibrations. For example, recently built bridges and floors have shown to be sensitive to human induced vibration. Although there have been more cases of footbridges experiencing excessive vibration by pedestrians in the past, this problem attracted considerably greater public and professional attention only after the infamous swaying of the London Millennium Footbridge located across the Thames River in central London in 2000 at its opening day. The structure was closed and retrofitted with viscous and tuned mass dampers. Human apply static and dynamic loads on structures due to the various functions they perform, i.e., sitting, walking, running, jumping, bouncing, etc. These human activities on structures cause vibration in structures and once structure starts vibrating beyond certain limit, it results a serviceability problems. Passive humans (such as humans sitting or standing on the structure) influence the dynamic properties (mass, stiffness and damping) and modal characteristics of the structure carrying them and active humans (such as humans walking, jumping, bouncing or other rhythmic activities performs on structure) can bring the structure into vibration. Excessive vibrations may occur if the motion frequency of human coincides with a resonant frequency of the structural system. Human-structure interaction is applicable to the design of structures. Human walking possesses adaptive and feedback nature, inducing motion dependent human walking forces on structures. The excessive vibration caused by humans need to be mitigated and bring within acceptable limits. Moreover, passive and active dampers provide a reliable solution. However, a proper type of damper selection and design is a crucial part in the vibration mitigation of structures. This paper presents the structural problems of human induced vibrations, formulation of human loading on structures, and some proposed models for human-structure interaction along with some case studies. Moreover, some recent solutions of structural vibration mitigation applying dampers are discussed in this paper.

Index Terms—Human loading, Structural vibration, Human-structure interaction, Vibration mitigation, Dampers

Cite:Prakash Kumar and Anil Kumar, "Human Induced Vibration in Structures," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Special Issue, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 44-54, January 2014.