A New Method to Avoid Resonance of Existing Pedestrian Bridges

Because resonance is more likely to occur in pedestrian bridges, and excessive modification of existing structures is not feasible, a new method to avoid resonance is proposed. In the new method, the main girder of a pedestrian bridge and the handrail have been integrated, and the dynamic characteristic of the whole pedestrian bridge will be altered by the dynamic modification of the handrail. Frequency optimization will be done to the handrail by Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO) method, and the eigenfrequency of the pedestrian bridge is to be away from the eigenfrequency of the pedestrian, so as to avoid resonance between the bridge and the pedestrian. The validity of this method is checked by an actual example.