Calculating response factors for floor vibration and assessing performance

Welcome to part 2 in this occupant-induced floor vibration series. If you haven’t read part 1, do that now - it covers all of the background to the calculations we’ll be implementing in this tutorial.

Here, in part 2, our aim is to implement both the low and high-frequency analysis procedures we discussed previously. My guess is that, even after reading through part 1, you still have some questions about how the analysis workflows are implemented. We want to address these questions so that you walk away from this tutorial able do directly apply these methods to your own structures.

Make sure to download the complete Python code that goes with this tutorial (linked above). I’ve prepared a Jupyter Notebook that captures everything we’re going to cover and runs from start to finish with one click. It should be a really handy reference to look at in parallel to reading this tutorial.

We’ll cover two design examples:

• a low-frequency footbridge analysis
• and a high-frequency floorplate analysis.

The type of structure (linear footbridge versus 2D planar floorplate) only influences the determination of modal characteristics. You can apply either of the analyses demonstrated below to any ‘walking structure’ you like - once you can determine the modal properties.

Ok, with all that said, let’s dive in!