Analysis of the Effect of Vibration from Footfalls on Office Building

Human footfalls are the main source of vibration in office building and it could affect the structure of the building as well as causing discomfort and annoyance to the occupants of the building when the vibration level inside the building exceeds the recommended level. The objectives of the study are to determine the level of vibration on each floor of a multi-storey building due to footfalls and to perform structural response on the multi-storey building due to footfalls input. The selected building for this study is Registrar Office building located in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). The scope of study is focused on the effect of vibration induced by footfalls on multi-storey building and analyzing the data using MATLAB and ANSYSv14. The real inputs of vibration induced by footfalls were measured and obtained using Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV). The vibration level induced by footfalls on the multi-storey office building can be determined using Vibration Criteria (VC) guidelines. Finally, from the study, the vibration level achieved for this Registrar Office building is in ISO level range which is still under the acceptable limit for office building.