Lateral Excitation Of Bridges By Balancing Pedestrians

On its opening day, the London Millennium Bridge experienced unexpected large oscillations due to crowd loading. It has generally been thought this was due to pedestrians synchronising their footsteps with the bridge motion. However, this is not supported by more recent measurements on other bridges. In contrast with previous research, this study considers the basic way humans maintain balance. This gives the surprising result that pedestrians walking randomly, keeping balance as normal, can cause large bridge oscillations. This finally seems to explain the initiation of the Millennium Bridge 'wobble' and gives new insight for designing bridges to avoid vibration problems.


Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Physical Sciences


Proceedings A has an illustrious history of publishing pioneering and influential research articles across the entire range of the physical and mathematical sciences. These have included Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, the Braggs' first account of X-ray crystallography, Dirac's relativistic theory of the electron, and Watson and Crick's detailed description of the structure of DNA.


Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Physical Sciences