Fuzzy probabilistic analysis of the comfort perceived by pedestrians exposed to traffic-induced vibrations of bridge structures

Walking and standing persons on bridge structures should be exposed to pleasant environmental conditions in order to ensure a comfortable and safe experience. In this perspective, the vibration serviceability problem has been extensively investigated in footbridges whereas the perceived comfort of pedestrians on bridge structures mainly subjected to traffic loading has not received proper attention. Nonetheless, several bridges exist in which pedestrians and vehicular traffic coexist, thus posing important issues about the acceptability of the exposure conditions. Within this framework, this paper presents a hybrid fuzzy-probabilistic approach to assess the expected degree of comfort for pedestrians exposed to traffic-induced vibrations on bridge structures. The proposed method is applied to estimate the probability of finding unpleasant exposure conditions on a historic swing bridge.