• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.186-193
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• 2003

Floor vibrations in residence and office buildings are typically induced by heel drop and walking movement of occupants. The criteria of most vibration provisions have been developed based on the vibration caused by heel drop impact rather than walking. There may be considerable differences between the vibration characteristics induced by walking and heel drop. The effect of walking vibration was not well reflected on current provisions. In this paper, shaking table test was performed to investigate the human perception level against the vibrations due to walking and heel drop. This study attempts to compare the human Perception level of two different vibration sources. Also, this study investigates the effect of damping on a Perception level under heel drop and walking vibration.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.3
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• pp.283-294
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• 2022

An inerter is a passive mechanical element whose inertance can be thousands of times its own physical mass. This paper discusses the application of an inerter-based passive control system, termed rotational inertial double-tuned mass damper (RIDTMD), to mitigate human-induced floor vibrations. First, the acceleration frequency response function of the floor with an RIDTMD is first derived. It is then employed to determine the optimal design parameters of the RIDTMD using the extended fixed-points technique. Based on a theoretical analysis, design-oriented empirical functions are proposed for the RIDTMD optimal parameters, whose performance for floor vibration control is evaluated by numerical examples, in which three typical human-induced load types are considered: walking, jumping, and bouncing. The results indicate that the applicability and effectiveness of the RIDTMD for human-induced floor vibration control are robust for various load types, load frequencies, and floor natural frequencies. For the same mass ratio, the RIDTMD is better than the TMD in reducing the floor vibration amplitude and improving the effective frequency suppression bandwidth, and for the same vibration suppression effect, the mass of the RIDTMD is much lighter than that of the TMD.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.95-103
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• 2018

Active vibration control via inertial mass actuators has been shown as an effective tool to significantly reduce human-induced vertical vibrations, allowing structures to satisfy vibration serviceability limits. However, a lot of practical obstacles have to be solved before experimental implementations. This has motivated simple control techniques, such as direct velocity feedback control (DVFC), which is implemented in practice by integrating the signal of an accelerometer with a band-pass filter working as a lossy integrator. This work provides practical guidelines for the tuning of DVFC considering the damping performance, inertial mass actuator limitations, such as stroke and force saturation, as well as the stability margins of the closed-loop system. Experimental results on a full scale steel-concrete composite structure (behaves similar to a footbridge) with adjustable span are reported to illustrate the main conclusions of this work.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.347-362
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• 2022

Current vibration serviceability assessment criteria for wind-induced vibrations in tall buildings are based largely on human 'perception' thresholds which are shown not to be directly translatable to human 'acceptability' of vibrations. There is also a considerable debate about both the metrics and criteria for vibration acceptability, such as frequency of occurrence or peak vs mean vibration, and how these might vary with the nature of the vibration. Furthermore, the design criteria are necessarily simplified for ease of application so cannot account for a range of environmental, situational and human factors that may enhance or diminish the impact of vibrations on serviceability. The dual-site VSimulators facility was created specifically to provide an experimental platform to address gaps in understanding of human response to building vibration. This paper considers how VSimulators can be used to inform general design guidance and support design of specific buildings for habitability, in terms of vibration, which allow engineers and clients to make informed decisions with regard to sustainable design, in terms of energy and financial cost. This paper first provides a brief overview of current vibration serviceability assessment guidelines, and the current understanding and limitations of occupants' acceptability of wind-induced motion in tall buildings. It then describes how the dual-site VSimulators facility at the Universities of Bath and Exeter can be used to assess the effects of motion and environment on human comfort, wellbeing and productivity with examples of how the facility capabilities have been used to provide new, human experience based experimental research approaches.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.731-740
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• 2014

Occupants induced floor vertical vibrations may cause other occupant's annoyance and lead to social loss. To help control such floor vibrations, several criteria have been developed mostly based on human perception tests and floor vibration tests. Floor vibration is evaluated by comparison with criteria and vibration parameters of subject floor, such as frequency, damping ratio, acceleration value, vibration duration time and occurrence frequency. Three acceleration value parameters are used in criteria; peak acceleration, rms acceleration and VDV, when a floor vibration serviceability is evaluated. Meanwhile rms acceleration and peak acceleration are adopted as vibration limit value in criteria and researches of human perception for vibration. Occupants induced floor vibration is transient rather than steady state. However, rms acceleration is not reliable parameter for evaluating transient vibration. The objective of this study is to investigate the characters of human perception level according to acceleration value parameters for vibration induced by heel impacts and walking activities.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.237-244
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• 2001

This work was intended to investigate the effect of vibration transmission paths on the ride vibration of tractor during the rotavating and transporting operations by applying the vibration path analysis method. Accelerations at the cab mounts were measured during the rotavating and transporting operations. Ride vibrations at the sear were than calculated using the measured accelerations at the cab mounts, and the frequency response functions and inertances between the seat and cab mounts, which were derived experimentally by the impact hammer test in static condition. The human sensitivity to vibration frequency was also taken into consideration for the calculation of ride vibrations at the 1/3 octave center frequencies in the frequency domain. Vibrations transmitted through rear cab mounts affected more significantly the ride vibration of tractor. The peak accelerations at the seat occurred at the frequencies of the engine and crank speed, and the frequency induced by tire lugs on the road transportation. It was found that the rear cab mounts should be improved in order to reduce the ride vibrations more effectively.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.467-478
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• 2019

Composite floor structures formed by continuous slab panels may be susceptible to excessive vibrations, even when properly designed in terms of ultimate limit state criteria. This is due to the inherent vibration characteristics of continuous floor slabs composed by precast orthotropic reinforced concrete panels supported by steel beams. These floor structures display close spaced multimode vibration frequencies and this dynamic characteristic results in a non-trivial vibration problem. Structural stiffening and/or insertion of struts between floors are the usual tentative solution applied to existing vibrating floor structures. Such structural alterations are in general expensive and unsuitable. In this paper, this vibration problem is analyzed on the basis of results obtained from experimental measurements in typical composite floors and their theoretical counterpart obtained with computational modeling simulations. A passive control system composed by multiple synchronized dynamic attenuators (MSDA) was designed and installed in these floor structures and its efficiency was evaluated both experimentally and through numerical simulations. The results obtained from experimental tests of the continuous slab panels under human walking dynamic action proved the effectiveness of this control system in reducing vibrations amplitudes.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.15-19
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• 2012

Occupant footfalls are often the most critical source of floor vibration on upper floors of buildings. Floor motions can degrade the performance of imaging equipment, disrupt sensitive research equipment, and cause discomfort for the occupants. It is essential that low-vibration environments be provided for functionality of sensitive spaces on floors above grade. This requires a sufficiently stiff and massive floor structure that effectively resists the forces exerted from user traffic. Over the past 25 years, generic vibration limits have been developed, which provide frequency dependent sensitivities for wide classes of equipment, and are used extensively in lab design for healthcare and research facilities. The same basis for these curves can be used to quantify acceptable limits of vibration for human comfort, depending on the intended occupancy of the space. When available, manufacturer's vibration criteria for sensitive equipment are expressed in units of acceleration, velocity or displacement and can be specified as zero-to-peak, peak-to-peak, or root-mean-square (rms) with varying frequency ranges and resolutions. Several approaches to prediction of floor vibrations are currently applied in practice. Each method is traceable to fundamental structural dynamics, differing only in the level of complexity assumed for the system response, and the required information for use as model inputs. Three commonly used models are described, as well as key features they possess that make them attractive to use for various applications. A case study is presented of a tall building which has fitness areas on two of the upper floors. The analysis predicted that the motions experienced would be within the given criteria, but showed that if the floor had been more flexible, the potential exists for a locked-in resonance response which could have been felt over large portions of the building.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.459-466
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• 2001

The floor vibration aspect for building structures which are in need of large open space are influenced by the interrelation between natural frequency and working loads. Structures with a long span and low natural frequency have a higher possibility of experiencing excessive vibration induced by dynamic excitation such as human activities. These excessive vibrations make the residents uncomfortable and the serviceability deterioration. Need formulation of loads data through actual measurement to apply walking loads that is form of dynamic load in structure analysis. The loads induced by human activities were classified into two types. First type is in place loads. the other type is moving loads. A series of laboratories experiments had been conducted to study the dynamic loads induced by human activities. The earlier works were mainly concerned to parameters study of dynamic loads. In this Paper, the walking loads have been directly measured by using the measuring plate in which two load cells were placed, the parameters, the load-time history of walking loads, and the dynamic load factors have been analyzed. Moreover, the shape of the harmonic loads which were gotten by decomposition the walking loads have been analyzed , and the walking loads modeling have been carried out by composition these harmonic loads derived by functional relation.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.525-537
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• 2017

This paper explores different vibration control strategies for the cancellation of human-induced vibration on a structure with time-varying modal parameters. The main motivation of this study is a lively urban stress-ribbon footbridge (Pedro $G\acute{o}mez$ Bosque, Valladolid, Spain) that, after a whole-year monitoring, several natural frequencies within the band of interest (normal paring frequency range) have been tracked. The most perceptible vibration mode of the structure at approximately 1.8 Hz changes up to 20%. In order to find a solution for this real case, this paper takes the annual modal parameter estimates (approx. 14000 estimations) of this mode and designs three control strategies: a) a tuned mass damper (TMD) tuned to the most-repeated modal properties of the aforementioned mode, b) two semi-active TMD strategies, one with an on-off control law for the TMD damping, and other with frequency and damping tuned by updating the damper force. All strategies have been carefully compared considering two structure models: a) only the aforementioned mode and b) all the other tracked modes. The results have been compared considering human-induced vibrations and have helped the authors on making a decision of the most advisable strategy to be practically implemented.