Fibre-Reinforced Footbridge for Research into Human Interaction with Lively Structures

A lightweight footbridge made of fibre-reinforced polymer was designed and commissioned at the University of Warwick with the aim of advancing understanding of human interaction with vibrating structures. All connections were realised using stainless steel bolts, making the structure demountable. The footbridge is 19.8 m long and 2.35 m wide, has natural frequency of the first vertical flexural vibration mode at 2.5 Hz and is suitable for studying pedestrian interaction with vertical vibration of up to 10 m/s2. This first aim of the paper is to introduce the footbridge and its dynamic properties. After the initial commissioning and use, the bridge was dismantled and rebuilt two times. For this reason dynamic properties of the bridge were measured after each build stage and will be presented in this study. The second aim of the paper is to introduce a range of applications, within the human-structure interaction theme, for which the footbridge has been or could be used. The applications range from looking into influence of vertical vibration on human’s walking locomotion, via evaluation of pedestrian’s subjective response to vibration to establishing human response to multi-sensory input from the environment (e.g. visual, tactile and audio).