Peak acceleration response spectrum of long span floor vibration by pedestrian excitation

Floor vibration due to human activities is an important problem in serviceability design of the light and flexible structures. Static deflection limits stipulated in current design codes can not sufficiently meet the needs of the floor serv iceability. Through the method proposed by ELLINGWOOD, the loads acting on floor were formed using typical footfall traces. Then,after a large amount of dynamic simulations on beams of different modes, spans, damping and boundary conditions, the dynamic response spectrum of floor to realistic pedestrian excitation was achieved and based on which a response spectrum method was presented. To justify the validity of the method, sensitivity analysis was carried out to clarify the effects of such factors as mode selection, span, damping and boundary conditions. Through envelope curves presented in this paper, one can easily calculate the maximum acceleration of the floor vibration under the pedestrian loads. The advantage of the method is that it can give an approximate result while avoiding the trouble in defining loads in time history analysis.