USE OF OPERATIONAL MODAL ANALYSIS ON EMPTY AND OCCUPIED STADIA STRUCTURES

Understanding of the dynamic behaviour of sports stadia under crowd dynamic excitation is becoming increasingly important. Reasons for this are that stadia are becoming more slender, crowds are in general becoming more lively and stadia are more frequently being used for nonsporting events, such as pop and rock concerts. One of the invaluable tools to study the as-built vibration behaviour of grandstands is operational modal analysis (OMA), which can be used to study both empty and occupied stadium structures. This paper gives an overview of some of the past work that has been done in this field, including use of OMA to determine the global modes of large empty stadium structures and the use of OMA to investigate the nature of crowd-structure interaction.