Verification of equivalent mass-spring-damper models for crowd-structure vibration response prediction

This paper describes the modal testing and in situ vibration monitoring of a high profile UK stadium during 2004 and 2005, including multiple concerts and sports events. The paper explains how current design guides pertaining to crowd dynamic loading of grandstands can be practically implemented using experimental modal data or finite element (FE) models. Three major pieces of guidance are considered: Canadian, ISO, and UK. Particular attention is given to new UK Recommendations as they are a major diversion from other methods and have yet to be robustly verified against real events on full-scale structures. This paper is therefore a unique verification exercise for all three guidelines because it makes use of rare combined in situ video and structural vibration response data pertinent to crowd dynamic loading of grandstands. Canadian guidance is found to predict the order of magnitude of responses well but lacks reliable precision, whilst the UK Recommendations are found to be very good at recreating responses at certain points along the considered stand. ISO 10137 is found to be overly sensitive to design assumptions and significantly overestimates all responses. Interestingly, none of the three pieces of guidance recreate the actual observed nonsymmetrical distribution of responses along the structure, indicating that further investigation and refinement is needed.