Newly embraced use of lightweight (and high-strength) materials in construction has led to development of exceptionally beautiful and slender structural forms, especially in case of landmark public structures such as footbridges as well as walkways and corridors between buildings, at airports and shopping malls. These pedestrian structures are more sensitive to human-generated dynamic loading than ever before and their design is governed by vibration serviceability limit state. Pedestrians start interacting with these structures under certain conditions resulting in vibration-dependent dynamic force and unacceptably large errors in predictions of the actual vibration response.
This project, vPERFORM, will transform the current design practice by developing reliable predictive models of vibration performance of lightweight pedestrian structures. For the first time, vertical vibration conditions under which the interaction occurs will be identified and the interaction modelled to reflect experimental observations. This will be achieved via three objectives: