A method for predicting the lateral girder response of footbridges induced by pedestrians

A numerical method is proposed to predict the lateral girder response induced by pedestrians on footbridges. The method is based on the motion of equations including the coefficients of the rate of a pedestrian’s lateral force, pedestrian density, rate of synchronized pedestrians, and pedestrians’ attitude to large vibration amplitude. These coefficients were determined by the field measured data of two slender footbridges and the experimental data of pedestrian induced forces. The lateral girder responses were then predicted for these bridges with different pedestrian densities by the proposed numerical method. They agreed reasonably well with the field measured girder responses of these bridges, which verified the proposed prediction method.