Structural serviceability problems such as excessive vibrations and deflections associated with human movements have recently become of great concern. The recommended design values for human loading in the current U.S. building codes and standards were developed over half a century ago and are based on strength requirements alone. Recent investigations have led to load models for individuals and small groups of people using laboratory measurements on small and medium size force platforms. The current project has been directed towards testing the group load model. We designed and built a floor system instrumented with strain gages and displacement transducers to measure dynamic loads due to large groups of people. We investigated the floor system experimentally and analytically. The input dynamic forces were determined using data from the displacement transducers and also from the strain gages. The measured results compared closely with the predicted group loads obtained from our computer simulation model developed previously.

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