Dynamic Analysis of Building Composite Floors Subjected to Human Walking

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 subject to dynamic loads due to human activities. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of steel-concrete interaction degree (from full to various levels of partial interaction) over the composite floors dynamic behaviour subjected to human walking loads. The investigated structural model was based on building composite floors and consisted of a typical office building interior bay. The proposed analysis methodology adopted the usual mesh refinement techniques present in the finite element method (FEM) simulations. 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 current investigation indicated that walking loads could induce the composite floors to reach unacceptable vibration levels, leading to a violation of the current human comfort criteria for these specific structures.