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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 93
PROCEEDINGS OF THE TENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL STRUCTURES TECHNOLOGY
Edited by:
Paper 112

Dynamic Analysis of Building Composite Floors Subjected to Human Walking

A.V. de A. Mello1, J.G. Santos da Silva2, S.A.L. de Andrade1, P.C.G. da S. Vellasco2 and L.R.O. de Lima2

1Civil Engineering Department, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio, Brazil
2Structural Engineering Department, State University of Rio de Janeiro, UERJ, Brazil

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
A.V. de A. Mello, J.G. Santos da Silva, S.A.L. de Andrade, P.C.G. da S. Vellasco, L.R.O. de Lima, "Dynamic Analysis of Building Composite Floors Subjected to Human Walking", in , (Editors), "Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Computational Structures Technology", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 112, 2010. doi:10.4203/ccp.93.112
Keywords: dynamic analysis, steel and composite structures, building composite floors, human comfort, structural behaviour, computational modelling.

Summary
The increasing occurrence of building vibration problems due to human activities led to a specific design criterion to be addressed in structural design. This was the main motivation for the development of a design methodology centred on the composite floor dynamic response subjected to dynamic loads due to human activities [1].

On the other hand, the competitive trends of the world market have long been forcing structural engineers to develop minimum weight and labour cost solutions. A direct consequence of this new design trend is a considerable increase in problems related to unwanted floor vibrations. For this reason, the structural floor systems become vulnerable to excessive vibrations produced by impacts such as human walking activities.

The geometry of the human body walking is, to a first approximation, a straight-leg motion that necessarily causes the main body mass to rise and fall at every pace. This rise and fall movement is typically about 50mm, peak to peak, but is sensitive to the leg angle at full stretch, and thus to the extent to which the walker is forcing the pace [1]. The present investigation was carried out based on a more realistic loading model developed to incorporate the dynamical effects induced by people walking when the dynamical response of composite floors was investigated.

The leg movement that causes an ascent and descending of the human body effective mass at each passing was considered and the position of the dynamic loading is changed according to the individual position. The generated time function, corresponding to the excitation induced by people walking, has a space and time description in this loading model [1].

This main objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of the degree of steel-concrete interaction (from a total to various levels of partial interaction) over the dynamic behaviour of composite floors subject to human walking loads [1]. The structural model investigated was based on building composite floors and consisted of a typical interior bay of an office building. The structural system was composed of a composite (steel-concrete) solution made of an "I" steel profile and a reinforced concrete slab. The proposed analysis methodology adopted the usual mesh refinement techniques present on the finite element method simulations implemented using the ANSYS program.

An extensive parametric study was developed focusing in the determination of the influence of the steel-concrete interaction over the composite floor dynamic response. The structural system peak accelerations were compared to the limiting values proposed by several authors and design standards. The numerical results indicated that the modelling of the dynamical excitations was one of the main key points to obtain reliable results. The current investigation indicated that walking loads could induce the composite floors to reach unacceptable vibration levels and, in these situations, resulting in a violation of the current human comfort criteria for these specific structures.

References
1
A.V. de A. Mello, "Análise do Efeito da Interação Aço-Concreto sobre a Resposta Dinâmica de Pisos Mistos", PhD Thesis (In Portuguese), Civil Engineering Post-graduate Programme, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2009.

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