Citation

Bishop NWM, Willford M, Pumphrey R. Safety Sci. 1995; 18(4): 261-276.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper deals with the problems associated with designing modern slender staircases for human induced dynamic forces. Such structures stretch currently accepted design practice in three important ways. Firstly, the loading caused by a single person's footprint is not clearly defined and data from other sources such as walking on a horizontal surface would appear to be inadequate. Secondly, the effect of multi-person loading is unclear. Finally, the problem of setting an appropriate acceptance level of vibration is difficult, because published guidelines do not specifically cater for these types of structures. These three topics are discussed and compared using both theoretical methods and experimental results obtained from a number of in-situ structures. Additional footprint force-time curves were measured and were compared to previously reported values. The problems associated with taking such measurements are addressed and topics requiring future work are presented.