A Simplified Serviceability Assessment of Footbridge Dynamic Behaviour Under Lateral Crowd Loading

摘要

In this paper a simplified approach to footbridge serviceability assessment under lateral crowd loading is proposed. The approach is based on the determination of a limit crowd density, which causes the lateral acceleration of the deck to reach the human perceptibility threshold. The approach relies on a lateral load model that describes the action of both uncorrelated and synchronised among-each-other pedestrians by proposing a law that links the percentage of synchronised pedestrians to the value of the crowd density, which is assumed to be uniformly distributed along the span. The approach is applied to three case studies and the results are compared with those obtained through the application of other serviceability and stability criteria.