Evaluation of footfall induced vibration in building floor

Disturbing walking-induced vibrations have been observed more frequently in recent times on long span lightweight floor systems as evidenced by the development of a number of new design guidelines for floor vibration assessment. This paper discusses a simple probability-based vibration analysis of a real office composite floor, taking into account the variability in walking excitation and dynamic characteristics of the floor. Some aspects of randomness in gait parameters are determined via a statistical analysis of measured gait data obtained from a biomedical research program; and the likely change in serviceability load and the uncertainty in the estimation of floor damping and frequency are considered. Consequently, the probability distribution of the floor response is determined with good agreement between the predicted and measured floor responses. However, response levels can be translated inconsistently in terms of human comfort by various acceptance criteria.