Title: Lively footbridges: overview and perspectives for the development of crowd and structure monitoring systems

Authors: Fiammetta Venuti

Addresses: Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino, Viale Mattioli 39, I-10125 Torino, Italy

Abstract: Modern pedestrian bridges are very often lively structures: this feature is due, on one hand, to the increasing strength of materials and the design trend towards more slender and lightweight structures and, on the other, to the partial reliability of pedestrian dynamic load models and design procedures. Human-induced vibrations reduce the footbridge serviceability and frequently imply high costs for the improvement of the footbridge dynamic behaviour after the construction. Therefore, it is important to define comfort criteria, suitable and predictive load models and practical design rules and to develop monitoring systems to measure the crowd flow and the structural response. The scope of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the state-of-the-art concerning human-induced vibrations on footbridges, with a special focus on international codes and guidelines, addressed to provide a background knowledge to be shared with researchers involved in structural health monitoring and control.

Keywords: pedestrian action; footbridge dynamics; dynamic behaviour; load models; comfort criteria; measurement techniques; lively footbridges; modelling; pedestrian bridges; human-induced vibrations; bridge design; crowd flow; structural response; international codes; international guidelines; structural health monitoring.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLCPE.2012.051284

International Journal of Lifecycle Performance Engineering, 2012 Vol.1 No.1, pp.92 - 113

Accepted: 11 Jan 2012
Published online: 17 Sep 2014 *

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