Improved footfall model for vibration of high-frequency floors

Abstract

Human induced vibration is one of the essential design considerations for the design of high-frequency building floors supporting vibration sensitive equipment and processes, such as precision laboratories and operating theatres in hospitals. For this purpose, the model derived by Arup, and adopted by the current UK Concrete Society and the Concrete Centre design guidelines, has been widely used. In this paper, the same model was derived again using more realistic and statistically more reliable walking forces measurements than those used to derive the original model. These forces, which comprise more than 50,000 single footfall forces, were previously measured from more than 70 participants walking on a treadmill. By comparing Arup’s effective impulse equation: Ieff=54(fp1.43/ fn 1.3) by the derived effective impulse: Ieff=275(fp 1.22/ fn 1.74), a clear difference between the two models can be noticed and this indicates the importance of using more realistic walking forces to derive the model. This could be achieved by deriving this model using continuously measured walking forces from statistically sufficient number of people.