Humans Jumping on Flexible Structures: Effect of Structural Properties

The behaviour of humans jumping on flexible structures has become a matter of some importance for both structural integrity and also human tolerance. The issue is of great interest for stadia, footbridge and floor structures. A test rig has been developed for exploring the forces, accelerations and displacements that occur when a human subject jumps on a flexible structure where motion can be perceived. In tests reported earlier, it was found that the human is able to generate near resonant response of the structure but it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to jump at or very near to the natural frequency of the structure when the structural vertical motion is significant. Also, the force developed by the subject was found to drop significantly near resonance. In this paper, the effect of the subject-to-structure mass ratio and the damping ratio of the structure on the ability of the subject to jump near resonance, and on the force drop out, is presented. It is shown that as the structure becomes more massive and more highly damped it moves less for nominally the same jumping excitation. In this situation, it becomes easier to jump near resonance and the degree of force drop out reduces, though it is still significant.