Towards modelling in-service pedestrian loading of floor structures

With increasing importance of vibration serviceability limit state in floor design, especially in relation to human induced dynamic loading, there is a need for defining reliable models of pedestrians that reflect normal usage of the structure. Modelling the walking loading for individual pedestrians has rapidly advanced over the past decade. However, there is a serious lack of information about realistic loading scenarios (e.g. walking habits of people using the floor, their walking patterns and the number of active people at any one time) and the corresponding vibration response. This paper aims to improve our understating of the issues by presenting the results of a 3-day monitoring of in-service vibration at a "hot spot" in an office floor. In addition, it is not known how well the single person loading scenario, advocated in the current design guidelines, reflects the actual in-service vibration of the structure normally exposed to multi-person excitation. The data acquired for this study are analysed statistically to evaluate the key vibration measures relevant for the vibration service-ability state of the floor. Then possibility for modelling human loading in the form of virtual pedestrian(s) representing the floor occupants is analysed. It was found that the single person model results in conservative estimates of the actual vibration on this particular floor.