A direct pedestrian-structure interaction model to characterize the human induced vibrations on slender footbridges

Although the scientific community had knowledge of the human induced vibration problems in structures since the end of the 19th century, it was not until the occurrence of the vibration phenomenon happened in the Millennium Bridge (London, 2000) that the importance of the problem revealed and a higher level of attention devoted. Despite the large advances achieved in the determination of the human-structure interaction force, one of the main deficiencies of the existing models is the exclusion of the effect of changes in the footbridge dynamic properties due to the presence of pedestrians. In this paper, the formulation of a human-structure interaction model, addresses these limitations, is carried out and its reliability is verified from previously published experimental results.