Abstract

This work focuses on evaluating the vertical movements that appear when a pedestrian is walking on a slender beam-like structure. For that, the pedestrian is modelled by a dynamic system consisting on a concentrated mass, located in its center of masses, supported by two springs which simulate the stiffness of the legs. The success of this simple mechanical model is that the resulting contact forces are well adjusted to those observed experimentally for human gait. In this way, the structure is undergoing the moving mass and is loaded with realistic forces, resulting in a proper assembly to study interaction effects. The dynamic response of the beam is obtained at any coordinate by the modal superposition method, considering a finite number of modes. Differential equations of the resulting coupled problem are solved using proper numerical techniques. Solutions obtained for different scenarios (depending on the mass of the pedestrian with respect to the mass of the beam and on the pace) are presented.