Comfort assessment for a pedestrian passageway suspended under a girder bridge with random traffic flows

In recent years, a new type of pedestrian passageway, which is suspended under the main girder bridge, has emerged. Vibration in this type of structure is mainly due to the vehicle traffic loading on the main bridge. However, the current codes are not appropriate for vibration comfort assessments for these pedestrian passageways. In this study, a novel method was proposed for probability-based vibration comfort assessment, which considers the randomness of traffic flows. Using an in-service suspended pedestrian bridge as an example, it was considered to the factors that influence the vibration comfort using field measured traffic loading. The results showed that the peak acceleration response of the pedestrian bridge under a random traffic flow followed a normal distribution and there were some deviations in the vibration comfort assessment results when different codes are used. Factors such as the vehicle type ratio, roughness of the pavement, and vehicle speed had significant effects on the acceleration response of the structure.