Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2010
An emerging research topic in civil engineering is the dynamic interaction between crowdsand structures. Structures such as footbridges, which oscillate due to the crossing of agroup of pedestrians, or stands within stadia or concert halls, which vibrate due to therythmic movement of the audience are of particular interest. The objective of this studyis twofold: modelling the movement of pedestrians with consideration ofpedestrian-pedestrian, and pedestrian-obstacle interactions, and the incorporation of apedestrian-structure coupling in the previous model. Frémond’s model, which allows us tosimulate the movement of an assembly of particles and accounts for collisions amongconsidered rigid particles, is presented and adapted to the crowd by giving a willingnessto the circular particles, which allows each pedestrian to move according to a giventarget. To handle the crowd-structure interaction in the case of lateral oscillations offootbridges, the Kuramoto differential equation governing the time evolution of thelateral motion of each pedestrian is implemented in the previous model. Preliminaryresults obtained from numerical simulations are presented and discussed.