Bayesian Prediction of Structural Response Under Crowd-Induced Walking Load

Research on modeling the walking-induced dynamic load and its effects on structures has been increasing in recent years. Existing standards for estimating the acceleration response excited by crowd takes N (N is the number of walking persons in a crowd) times the single pedestrian load as the crowd load, neglecting uncertainties in the related parameters. This paper proposes a method for predicting the crowd-induced structural acceleration response based on the Bayesian theory. Parameters of the crowd include the distribution of stepping frequency, the interval of arriving time and the weight of pedestrians. By combining the existing methods for calculating the structural response to a pedestrian load and the Bayesian theory, the root-mean-square acceleration along with the crowd parameters are obtained. A field investigation is conducted to study the walking characteristics of pedestrians, including the distribution of stepping frequency, walking velocity and step length. The case of a crowd moving acros...