Experimental Validation of the Vibration Serviceability Assessment of a Lightweight Steel Footbridge with Tuned Mass Damper

This paper presents the vibration serviceability assessment of the Lamot footbridge. An innovative design has been adopted for the footbridge, resulting in a very slender en light structure, prone to human induced vibrations. A tuned mass damper (TMD) was therefore included in the design of the footbridge to ensure the vibration serviceability. A measurement campaign was carried out to obtain the operational modal characteristics of the footbridge with the TMD deactivated. These results were subsequently applied as input for the calibration of the numerical model (FE model) to increase the accuracy of the numerical predictions of the response to pedestrian loading. In situ vibration measurements were performed with different types of human loading with the TMD in operational and deactivated condition, showing that the TMD leads to a significant reduction of the acceleration levels. Thanks to the combined effect of a high modal damping and the installation of a tuned mass damper, the vibration comfort of the pedestrians is ensured.