Overview of the Footfall Assessment in Tekla Structural Designer

Technological advances in structural design have made buildings lighter and more efficient. This can lead to floors being more sensitive to vibration due to walking-related activities. An assessment of this sensitivity is commonly required to avoid adverse disturbance of occupants or sensitive equipment. Previous versions of Tekla Structural Designer included options to run simplified floor vibration checks and while pragmatic, these simple ‘hand method’ checks could be limited in terms of geometric applicability and accuracy. The desire for a more generally applicable and accurate method has resulted in a comprehensive new rigorous analytical footfall assessment following the method of the AISC Design Guide 11 (DG11).

While such rigorous footfall assessment is a complex topic and process, our Engineers have created a workflow that is simple to use while still providing all the detail to ensure the assessment is not a "black box." See the short video above for an overview of the new rigorous analytical footfall assessment workflow and view the following Tekla User Assistance article for more information  -   New - Footfall assessment of floor vibration to AISC Design Guide 11.