Identification of mass–spring–damper model of walking humans

Interaction of walking people with vibrating structures is known to be an important yet challenging phenomenon to simulate. Despite of its considerable effects on the structural response, no properly formulated and experimentally verified model currently exists to simulate this interaction in the vertical direction. This work uses a single-degree-of-freedom mass–spring–damper model of a walking human to simulate its interaction with a vibrating structure. Extensive frequency response function measurements were performed on a test structure that was occupied by more than a hundred test subjects walking in various group sizes and at different times in 23 tests. The identified modal properties of the occupied structure were used in three different identification procedures to estimate the parameters of the walking human model. A discrete model of human–structure system was used to simulate interaction of each walking person with the structure. The analysis identified the range of 2.75–3.00 Hz for the natural frequency and 27.5%–30% for the damping ratio of the model of a walking human, having constant mass of 70 kg. The extent of the experimental data and the measurement details, diversity of loading scenarios and consistency of the results of the different identification procedures, provided high level of confidence on the suggested parameters for the single-degree-of-freedom walking human model.