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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 108
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIFTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CIVIL, STRUCTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING COMPUTING
Edited by: J. Kruis, Y. Tsompanakis and B.H.V. Topping
Paper 200

A Comparison of the Vibration Effects caused by City Transportation Systems on the Occupants of Buildings

K. Koziol

Institute of Structural Mechanics, Cracow University of Technology, Poland

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
K. Koziol, "A Comparison of the Vibration Effects caused by City Transportation Systems on the Occupants of Buildings", in J. Kruis, Y. Tsompanakis, B.H.V. Topping, (Editors), "Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 200, 2015. doi:10.4203/ccp.108.200
Keywords: traffic induced vibrations, vibration propagation, dynamic response of the building, paraseismic vibration.

Summary
This paper is concerned with the issue of the impact of transport vibrations on the occupants of buildings. An assessment is made using selected building vibration measurements caused by different means of city transport: a metro train in a tunnel, trams and traffic. The selected building was a multi-storey building of traditional masonry construction.

Acceleration of the vibrations on the floors of upper and lower stories of the building were measured. Then the root mean square (RMS) value of the vibration acceleration in the third octave frequency bands was analyzed. This was performed to assess the impact of vibration on people comparing the results of the analysis with the limiting values specified in the standard ISO 2631-2, Guide to the evaluation of human exposure to whole body vibration. Part 2 - Vibration in buildings.

In addition a finite element model of the investigated building was developed to the simulate the behaviour. Based on the results of measurements a validation of the model was carried out. As the kinematic excitation was assumed the ground level vibration of the structure of the building was obtained from the measurements. So excitation obtained was applied to the underground part of the building and a time history analysis (THA) was performed. The calculation of the effect on humans was compared with the results obtained from the measurements at the same point in the building ceiling. If the results did not differ significantly in the dominant frequency bands the model was considered to be good. So the validated model was used to estimate the impact of the transport vibrations on the people living on each floor of the building. This paper presents the results of these calculations for the prediction of the impact on people in the building vibrations generated by a metro-train in the tunnel, by tram and by traffic.

The conclusions demonstrated the differences in perception by the people of vibrations caused by surface transport and underground transport. In the case of the surface transport the vibration level increases with the height of the building and the greatest impact on building occupants is on the top floor. In contrast, underground transportation produces vibrations that have the greatest impact on people living on the ground floor and on upper floors this effect decreases. Therefore, as shown in the paper, in the same building excessive impact on people on the ground floor was induced by vibrations caused by the passage of underground trains in a tunnel and on the upper floors with underground transportation the vibration was not perceived by people while the vibrations generated by tram passages are at excessive levels.

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