Identification of mass-spring-damper model of walking humans

Interaction of walking people with structures is known to be an important yet challenging when simulating vertical response of the structure due to walking excitation. Despite of its critical effects on structural response, no properly formulated and experimentally verified model exist to simulate effects of walking pedestrians on structures. In this work, a set of modal tests based on frequency response function (FRF) are done on a test structure with people walking in different loading scenarios. The occupied structure modal parameters found in these tests are used an identification procedure where 'reverse engineering' method is used to find parameters of walking individual's single-degree-of-freedom mass-spring-damper model. A discrete model of human-structure system is used to simulate independent interaction of each walking person with structure. The analysis results suggest the ranges of 2.75-3.00 Hz and 27.5 %-30% for natural frequency and damping ratio of SDOF walking human model respectively.