Vibration serviceability assessment of lightweight floor structures subjected to human-induced excitation

Despite an increasing number of contemporary floors being constructed according to present vibration serviceability design guidelines, many of them do not provide satisfactory vibration performance. This is due to limitations in current guidelines for evaluating vibration performance, which consider a single pedestrian modeled as a stationary deterministic load and do not take into account the effect of varying walking paths on the floor’s dynamic response. Furthermore, the assessment of floor vibration performance based on a single pedestrian’s walking load scenario is not representative of the real-world situation, where floors are often subjected to simultaneous multi-pedestrian walking loads. Additionally, since the force of pedestrian walking is stochastic in nature, the deterministic approaches used by these guidelines can lead to unreliable estimates of vibration response. Although several studies aim to improve design tools for floor vibration serviceability, there are still gaps that need to be addressed to enhance the accuracy of these models and design tools without compromising the reliability of the results. This thesis explores the dynamic response of floors under pedestrian walking loads. The research includes deterministic and probabilistic approaches to investigate the dynamic response of floors under single and multiple pedestrian walking loads, including the variability of walking paths and loads. The study addresses the deficiencies of current design guidelines and proposes new analytical methods to accurately evaluate the vibration serviceability of floors. The proposed analytical methods are applied to real floor structures to demonstrate their reliability and effectiveness.