VIBRATION OF THE LONDONM

MILLENNIUM FOOTBRIDGE:
PART 1 - CAUSE
David E Newland
Department of Engineering
University of Cambridge
Trumpington Street
CAMBRIDGE
CB2 1PZ, UK
[email protected]
Abstract
When the London Millennium footbridge was opened in June 2000, it swayed alarmingly.
This generated huge public interest and the bridge became known as Londons wobbly
bridge. Part 1 of this paper explains how pedestrians unwittingly caused the bridge to selfexcite. Although previously documented, this phenomenon was not wellknown.

INTRODUCTION
To mark the Millennium, a new footbridge has been built across the river Thames in
London. It is a shallow suspension bridge linking St. Pauls Cathedral on the north side of
the river with the Tate Modern art gallery on the south side. The bridge is over 300 metres
long with three spans, the longest being the centre span of 144 metres. To meet the
designers artistic requirements, the bridges suspension cables sag only 2.3 metres, a
fraction of the sag of a traditional suspension bridge of the same span. As a result, the
cables carry a very high tension force for a bridge of this size, totalling some 2000 tonnes.
When the bridge was opened in June 2000, it was found that the it swayed noticeably. With
a large number of pedestrians on the bridge, its sideways movement was sufficient to cause
people to stop walking and hold on to the hand-rails. Because there was danger of personal
injury, it was decided to close the bridge after a few days for remedial work.

Figure 1. The London Millennium footbridge shortly after its completion. St Paul's Cathedral is at the top left

HISTORY
The bridge opened on 10 June 2000. For the opening ceremony, a crowd of over 1000
people had assembled on the south half of the bridge with a band in front. When they
started to walk across with the band playing, there was immediately an unexpectedly
pronounced lateral movement of the bridge deck. This movement became sufficiently large
for people to stop walking to retain their balance and sometimes to hold onto the hand rails
for support. Video pictures showed later that the south span had been moving through an
amplitude of about 50 mm at 0.8 Hz and the centre span about 75 mm at 1 Hz
approximately. Probably higher amplitudes occurred periodically and several modes were
involved. It was decided immediately to limit the number of people on the bridge, but even
so the deck movement was sufficient to be uncomfortable and to raise concern for public
safety so that on 12 June the bridge was closed until the problem could be solved. It was
not reopened to the public until 22 February 2002.
There was a significant wind blowing on the opening days (force 3-4) and the bridge had
been decorated with large flags, but it was rapidly concluded that wind buffeting had not
contributed significantly to vibration of the bridge. Another possible explanation was that
coupling between lateral and torsional deck movements was allowing vertical footfall
excitation to excite lateral modes, but this was not found to be a significant factor. Evidence
in support of this conclusion was that the 1 Hz mode of the centre span was the spans
second lateral mode; with nodes at its centre and at the two bridge piers, this mode had
practically no torsional movement.

It was realised very quickly that the problem was one of lateral excitation and although
allowance had been made for lateral forces it had not been expected that pedestrians would
so easily fall into step or that the lateral force per person would be as great as was
apparently proving to be the case.
RESEARCH
An immediate research programme was launched by the bridge's engineering designers Ove
Arup, supported by a number of universities and research organisations.
It was found that some similar experiences had been recorded in the literature, although
these were not well-known and had not yet been incorporated into the relevant bridge
building codes. A German report in 1972 quoted by Bachmann and Ammann in their
IABSE book (1987), described how a new steel footbridge had experienced strong lateral
vibration during an opening ceremony with 300-400 people. They explained how the
lateral sway of a persons centre of gravity occurs at half the walking pace. Since the
footbridge had a lowest lateral mode of about 1.1 Hz, the frequency of excitation was very
close to the mean pacing rate of walking of about 2 Hz. Thus in this case "an almost
resonating vibration occurred. Moreover it could be supposed that in this case the
pedestrians synchronised their step with the bridge vibration, thereby enhancing the
vibration considerably" (Bachmann, 1992, p. 636). The problem is said to have been solved
by the installation of horizontal tuned vibration absorbers.
The concept of synchronisation turned out to be very important, and a later paper by Fujino
et al. (1993) was discovered which described observations of pedestrian-induced lateral
vibration of a cable-stayed steel box girder bridge of similar size to the Millennium Bridge.
It was found that when a large number of people were crossing the bridge (2,000 people on
the bridge), lateral vibration of the bridge deck at 0.9 Hz could build up to an amplitude of
10 mm with some of the supporting cables whose natural frequencies were close to 0.9 Hz
vibrating with an amplitude of up to 300 mm. By analysing video recordings of pedestrians
head movement, Fujino concluded that lateral deck movement encourages pedestrians to
walk in step and that synchronisation increases the human force and makes it resonant with
the bridge deck. He summarised his findings as follows: "The growth process of the lateral
vibration of the girder under the congested pedestrians can be explained as follows. First a
small lateral motion is induced by the random lateral human walking forces, and walking
of some pedestrians is synchronised to the girder motion. Then resonant force acts on the
girder, consequently the girder motion is increased. Walking of more pedestrians are
synchronised, increasing the lateral girder motion. In this sense, this vibration was a selfexcited nature. Of course, because of adaptive nature of human being, the girder amplitude
will not go to infinity and will reach a steady state."
Although Fujino records the damping ratio of the 0.9Hz lateral mode as
, he found
that only 20% of the pedestrians on the main span of the bridge were completely
synchronised to the girder vibration and the amplitude of vibration was only 10 mm
(compared with 75 mm for the Millennium Bridge). Impressions from video clips of the
Millennium bridge are that a good deal more than 20% of walkers had synchronised their

step. Also in Fujinos example, the very large movement of the suspension cables (300 mm
amplitude) may have made these act as dynamic vibration absorbers and so limit the extent
and consequences of synchronisation.
It was clear that data specific to the Millennium bridge was urgently required and Arup
undertook an extensive programme of testing to obtain this. In addition to commissioning
tests on human gait and how this is affected by movement of the walking surface, the main
tests were carried out on the bridge itself. These included artificially shaking the bridge to
confirm mode shapes and damping and a comprehensive series of crowd tests. Detailed
vibration measurements and video records were made with pedestrians walking at different
speeds and densities on each span. These allowed reliable quantitative data on the
synchronous lateral excitation phenomenon to be established and a self-excitation model to
be developed which could give a reliable prediction of structural response.
ARUPS PEDESTRIAN LATERAL LOADING MODEL
Arup's loading model is described in Fitzpatrick et al (2001). Using experimental data
from controlled pedestrian loading tests, with an approximately constant density of
pedestrians walking at steady speed, Arup found that there was strong correlation between
the amplitude of the pedestrians (modal) excitation force and the amplitude of the bridge
decks (modal) lateral velocity. Measurement of deck velocity is straightforward, but the
excitation force was calculated from a power flow analysis based on the concept that the
work done by the net excitation force (foot-fall force less damping force) is equal to the
gain of kinetic energy per cycle. This led to the conclusion that, when synchronisation has
occurred, the amplitude of energy-transferring force per pedestrian is linearly proportional
to velocity and acts as a negative damping force. This allows the limiting number of people
for stability

to be calculated and the effective damping to be calculated for

NEW LINEAR FEEDBACK MODEL

These results can be reached by a completely different approach using a feedback model of
synchronous lateral excitation. It is based on the idea that people will naturally fall into step
with each other and that they will unconsciously adjust their group phasing so that the
bridge vibration increases to a maximum. This is important. As the assumed phase of
peoples walking and the bridges movement changes, bridge amplitude changes
enormously. From this feedback model, the phase to give peak response can be calculated
theoretically. It turns out that the answer agrees with the phase found by Arup from their
experimental studies.
The physical mechanism of synchronous lateral excitation is well described by Arup
(Dallard et al, 2001) in the following way:
"Chance footfall correlation, combined with the synchronization that occurs
naturally within a crowd, may cause the bridge to start to sway horizontally. If the
sway is perceptible, a further effect can start to take hold. It becomes more
comfortable for the pedestrians to walk in synchronization with the swaying of the
bridge. The pedestrians find this makes their interaction with the bridge more

predicable and helps them maintain their lateral balance. This instinctive behaviour
ensures that the footfall forces are applied at a resonant frequency of the bridge,
and with a phase such as to increase the motion of the bridge. As the amplitude of
the motion increases, the lateral force imparted by individuals increases, as does
the degree of correlation between individuals. The frequency "lock-in" and positive
force feedback caused the excessive motions observed at the Millennium Bridge."

Figure 1. Feedback system to represent synchronous lateral excitation

The frequency-domain feedback model shown in the diagram above represents this
is the Fourier transform of the

behaviour. Each mode is treated separately. Here

modal excitation force x(t) with no bridge movement,
the modal displacement response y(t).

is the Fourier transform of

is the modal frequency response function at

frequency and the complex quantity

describes the positive force feedback by
which the pedestrians modal input force is modified by movement of the bridge. These
are all complex quantities representing amplitude and phase at frequency , using the
functional notation
(amplitude and phase) and
equation is

where

. In this notation,

is a complex quantity

is a real quantity (amplitude only). The control

(1)

giving

(2)

The feedback function

is a complex function which we now write as a
real argument and complex exponential phase function:

(3)

As noted above, the observed motion of pedestrians is that their phase adjusts itself so as to
increase the motion of the bridge. Therefore it is natural to choose the phase angle

so

that the bridges response is a maximum, that is that

is a maximum. This
can be done by substituting (3) into (2) and then differentiating the denominator with
respect to to seach for a minimum to obtain the result that

(4)

For a resonant mode with modal stiffness, mass and damping given by k, m and c,

(5)

with which (4) becomes

(6)
coincides with the modes natural frequency so

When the footfall frequency

that

(7)

then (6) gives

(8)

or, in terms of the modal loss factor

of the bridge structure without pedestrians,

(9)

the maximum non-dimensional response ratio is

(10)

In this formula,

is the amplitude of the modal force exerted on the bridge by the

pedestrians walking on it, when their pacing rate coincides with twice
, with the phasing
of their movement having naturally adjusted itself to give maximum response.
The important conclusion from this analysis is that the walking pedestrians act as negative
damping and the effective modal loss factor is reduced when pedestrians walk over the
bridge. This conclusion confirms that obtained by Arup from a purely experimental
approach (Fitzpatrick et al. 2001, s. 4.11).
PHASE FOR PEAK RESPONSE
If we write

(11)

then the value of

for which the maximum response (4) is obtained is

(12)

which from (5) is

(13)

So, from (3), we see that phase of the pedestrians feedback force is leading the output
displacement of the bridge deck by an angle which becomes exactly
at the resonant
frequency defined by (7). This of course is what we expect for a negative damping force.
DETERMINING THE PROPORTIONALITY CONSTANT
Referring to figure 2, the modal feedback force
is generated by all the
pedestrians walking on the bridge. If there are N people unformly distributed along a span
of length

with mode shape

normalised so that

(14)

and if each person contributes an actual force per unit deck displacement of
unit modal displacement of
unit modal displacement is

and per

so that the modal force from pedestrians per

(15)

Hence the net modal loss factor from (10) is

(16)

where
= nNet modal loss factor
= modal loss factor for structure alone
N

= number of people on span

= length of span
= natural frequency (rad/s)

= modal stiffness

= modal mass
= amplitude of feedback force per person and per unit displacement of the bridge
deck at frequency

By measuring the net modal loss factor with N/L people per unit length of deck walking
steadily at the synchronous speed (footfall frequency twice the natural frequency), the
feedback force per person and per unit displacement,

, can be calculated from (16) if

the loss factor of bare structure has been measured previously. Alternatively, if
and are known,
considered in Part 2.

can be computed. The application of this formula (16) is

References are at the end of Part 2 of this paper

VIBRATION OF THE LONDONM
MILLENNIUM FOOTBRIDGE:
PART 2 - CURE
David E Newland
Department of Engineering
University of Cambridge
Trumpington Street

CAMBRIDGE
CB2 1PZ, UK
[email protected]
Abstract
Part 2 of this paper considers how much damping is needed to ensure that
pedestrian footbridges do not experience excessive lateral vibration and
describes how the necessary damping was provided for the London Millennium
footbridge.
INTRODUCTION
People-excited lateral bridge vibration is likely to occur for pedestrian bridges
which have low natural frequencies of swaying movement (less than 3 Hz) and
for which the lateral modes have light damping. In the case of Londons
Millennium Bridge, both these conditions applied.

One solution would have been to stiffen the bridge to increase its natural frequencies and
take these outside the excitation frequency range. However the artistic design of the bridge
would have been compromised by stiffening and this was regarded as most undesirable.
The alternative was to find a way of increasing the bridges inherently low damping so that
self-excitation did not occur. It has been found that, below a threshold damping level,
motion would build up, but that above the threshold damping level, self-excitation would
not occur. Determining what this threshold level was and then providing a means of
introducing the required amount of added damping proved a challenging task. It has
involved adding 37 linear viscous dampers and over 50 tuned mass vibration absorbers to
the initial structure. As a result, this bridge is now probably the most complex passivelydamped structure in the world.

Figure 3 Centre span of the Millennium Bridge

Installing dampers in a way that was consistent with the aesthetic design of the bridge was
difficult. A great deal of effort had been put into choosing a preferred design and the
concept of a blade of light had been adopted and received widespread approval (see
Deyan Sudjic (ed), Blade of Light: The Story of Londons Millennium Bridge, 2001). So
far as possible dampers had to be mounted underneath the bridge deck so that they would
be out-of-sight of everyone using the bridge.
RECONCILIATION WITH ARUPS DAMPING CALCULATION
At page 20 of Fitzpatrick et al (2001), Arup give their formula corresponding to
(16) as

(17)

Although this has been arrived at by a completely different approach, it is identical with
(16). This can be verified by making the substitutions

, and
. Apart from different normalisation of the modal shape function,
the main difference is that Arup defined feedback force as proportional to velocity whereas

the above analysis begins by assuming that the feedback force is proportional to
displacement (at a fixed frequency). Arup use their symbol k not for stiffness but to relate
pedestrian feedback force to deck lateral velocity, whereas as defined above relates
feedback force to deck lateral displacement.
Arups computation of their proportionality factor k was done by measuring the
acceleration time history under conditions of steady-state crowd loading with a constant
number of people walking steadily over each span (in turn) at the correct speed to resonate
with the relevant mode. From this time-history, they calculated modal velocity (see
Fitzpatrick et al, 2001, p. 14). If F is the amplitude of the modal feedback force (which is
assumed proportional to velocity), D is the amplitude of the modal damping force (also
proportional to velocity and known from previous measurements), and V is the amplitude of
the modal velocity, then for conservation of energy,

(18)

so that

(19)

where m is modal mass, and A is the amplitude of the modal acceleration, since

By plotting
calculated from (19) (N is the number of people on the span) against
modal velocity V, Arup arrived at an average value for k. Some typical values are shown in
figure 4 in which physical rather than modal results are plotted. The approximately linear
relationship in figure 4 appears to derive from the combined action of two factors: the force
per person increases (slowly) with amplitude and more people synchronise with deck
movement at larger amplitudes (see the additional material in Fitzpatrick et al, 2001).
Linearity is of course a starting assumption for the feedback model in part 1.

Figure 4. Correlation of pedestrian feedback force and deck velocity. The straight line shows average force exerted per pedestrian
(Newtons) plotted against lateral deck velocity (m/s). (Arup figure, reproduced from Deyan Sudjic (ed), 2001, p. 93).

DEPENDENCE OF NET DAMPING ON THE NUMBER OF PEDESTRIANS

It follows from (16) and (17) that the net loss factor will decrease in proportion
to the number of walkers on the span. If

is the number of pedestrians on

the span when the damping decreases to zero so that

loss factor for this mode when there are
be

, the net

pedestrians on the span will

(18)

PRACTICAL DAMPING MEASURES

Based on these considerations, Arup decided to aim for 15% to 20% of critical
damping for all lateral and lateral/torsional modes below 1.5 Hz and 5% to 10%
of critical damping for vertical and vertical/torsional modes below 3 Hz. This is
a huge increase in the original damping ratios of these modes which were
typically 1% or less. To understand how this was achieved, it is necessary to
understand the construction of the bridge. This can be seen from the
photograph, figure 3.

The bridge deck is carried on lateral supports spaced periodically. These reach out to clamp
onto the four parallel steel cables at each side of the deck. To a first approximation, the
bridge vibrates like a taut string passing over supports at the two bridge piers and anchored

to fixed supports at the river banks. Therefore lateral vibration involves shearing of the
deck structure with no appreciable bending. All the low frequency modes have nodes at the
attachment of the cables to the bridge piers and to the river bank anchorages. Although
linear viscous dampers can be connected between the bridge deck and these fixed
anchorages, the relative motion here is small and dampers fixed here cannot be made to
work efficiently. Maximum relative shear displacement occurs between the lateral supports
near anti-nodes, and therefore away from the fixed anchorages.
The solution adopted was to fit A-shaped frames to alternate lateral supports, with the
points of two As meeting at the intermediate supports (as shown in figure 5).

Figure 5. Plan view of underside of deck showing installation of dampers(from Fitzpatrick et al. 2001)

Between the points of each pair of A frames, a linear viscous damper was mounted. It was
possible to do this so that the moving parts were supported vertically on the upper-side of
the lateral supports. All the viscous dampers were supplied by the US firm Taylor Devices,
Inc. and incorporated metal bellows seals so that they are fully-sealed to the environment.
For the centre span, the damping introduced by frame-mounted viscous dampers was
supplemented by the action of 4 pairs of laterally-acting tuned-mass vibration absorbers
supplied by the German firm Gerb Schwingungsisolierungen GmbH, mounted
on the upper side of the bridge decks lateral supports, as shown in figure 5.
An additional 26 pairs of vertically-acting tuned-mass vibration absorbers were installed in
similar positions on other lateral supports to increase vertical damping. This is to guard
against the (unlikely) possibility that synchronous vertical vibration might occur when the
lateral problem had been removed. The tuned-mass vibration absorbers have masses

between 1 and 3 tonnes and they are located as close as possible to the antinodes of the
modes that they are damping.
EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
In addition to a range of laboratory tests to study human gait and the
interaction of pedestrians and moving platforms, the main experimental tests
were carried out on the bridge. These consisted of two essentially different
types of tests. Tests with no people, using a mechanical shaker to provide
excitation, were carried out to measure modal frequencies and damping. This
was done initially for the bare bridge, and then for the bridge with specimen
viscous and tuned-mass dampers installed, to verify their action. Tests with
walking people consisted mostly of recirculating tests where a metered number
of pedestrians walked in one direction across a single span, and then
immediately turned round and walked back to their starting point. Results from
these tests were used to generate data like that in figure 4 and to confirm the
essentially unstable feature of lateral synchronous excitation. A typical result
for the north span, without any added damping, is shown in figure 6. A metered
number of people were instructed to walk steadily at the speed needed to
synchronise with the first lateral mode of the north span. Progressively the
number of people walking was increased as shown by the staircase graph. The
bridge deck acceleration (plotted below the staircase graph) increased slightly
until 166 people were walking, when there was a sudden increase in deck
lateral response which was sufficiently violent to stop the test. Since, when
fully-laden, the north span can accommodate perhaps 700 people, the reason
for the problems on opening day is apparent.

The performance targets for the modified bridge were expressed as rms acceleration levels
measured at the quarter and half-span points with a 1 minute averaging time. The lateral
target, after filtering with a passband of 0.2 to 2.4 Hz was that the rms should not exceed
25x10-3g laterally; the vertical target in a passband of 0.2 to 4.8 Hz was that the rms should
not exceed 50x10-3g vertically. These targets were to be met in the presence of a test in
which 2,000 people walked over the bridge three times at 0.6 m/s, 0.9 m/s and 1.2 m/s
approximately with the bridge comfortably full of people. A great deal of planning went
into the organisation and carrying out of this test which was successfully completed on 30
January 2002. Measured acceleration levels were substantially below the target limits for
all the tests, typically less than one sixth of the agreed limits.

Figure 6. Onset of instability in crowd test on undamped north span, fundamental mode. As the number of people walking on the
span (upper graph) increased to 166 progressively, the bridge lateral acceleration (lower graph)increased only slowly until instability
was reached. The scale for acceleration is not given, but the peak acceleration reached was about 80x10 -3 g at the right-hand side
(Arup figure from Deyan Sudjic (ed), 2001, p. 93)

CONCLUSIONS
The introduction of damping by a combination of frame-mounted viscous
dampers and tuned-mass vibration absorbers has cured the London Millennium
Bridges famous wobble. It was caused by synchronous lateral excitation from
pedestrians, a phenomenon that was not well-known at the time but for which
there is now a good understanding and good data.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The bridges engineering designers were the Ove Arup Partnership and they
designed, tested and supervised the construction of the vibration control
system described in this paper. The authors role was as independent technical
advisor to the London Millennium Bridge Trust (the bridges principal funding
body) for the duration of the remedial work described above. During this
period, July 2000 to January 2002, he was pleased to work with the Ove Arup
Partnership, and with the W. S. Atkins Group who were advising the London
Borough of Southwark and the Corporation of London. Two detailed papers by
Ove Arup about the bridge are listed below. The interpretation of experimental
results in terms of the feedback model described in part 1 of this paper is
original to the author.
REFERENCES

H Bachmann, Case Studies of Structures with Man-Induced Vibrations,

Journal of Structural Engineering, Trans ASCE, 118, 631-647 (1992).

Hugo Bachmann and Walter Ammann, Vibrations in Structures Induced

by Man and Machines, Structural Engineering Document 3e,
International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE),
ch. 2: Man-Induced Vibrations, and Appendix A: Case Reports (1987).

Pat Dallard, Tony Fitzpatrick, Anthony Flint, Angus Low, Roger Ridsdill
Smith, Michael Willford and Mark Roche, London Millennium Bridge:
Pedestrian-Induced Lateral Vibration, J. of Bridge Engineering, Trans.
ASCE, 6, 412-417 (2001).

Tony Fitzpatrick, Pat Dallard, Sophie Le Bourva, Angus Low, Roger Ridsdill
Smith and Michael Willford, Linking London: The Millennium Bridge,
Royal Academy of Engineering, London, Paper ISBN 1 871634 99 7
(2001). An amended version of this paper with additional material was
subsequently published as P. Dallard et al. The London Millennium
Footbridge, The Structural Engineer, 79, No. 22, 17-33 (2001).

Yozo Fujino, Benito M Pacheco, Shun-ichi Nakamura and Pennung

Warnitchai, Synchronization of Human Walking Observed during Lateral
Vibration of a Congested Pedestrian Bridge, Earthquake Engineering
and Structural Dynamics, 22, 741-758 (1993).

Deyan Sudjic (ed), Blade of Light: The Story of Londons Millennium

Bridge, Penguin Books Ltd, London (2001), chapter by David E. Newland,
Vibration: problem and solution, 88-93.