Basic and Shortcut Tools for Structural Analysis 91 Vibration When using long spans and lightweight construction, vibration can become an important issue. Human sensitivity to vibration has been shown to depend on frequency, amplitude and damping, Vibrations can detract from the use of the structure or can compromise the structural strength and stability. Vibrations can be caused by wind, plant, people, adjacent building works, traffic, earth- quakes or wave action. Structures will respond differently depending on their mass and stiffness. Damping is the name given to the ability of the structure to dissipate the energy of the vibrations — usually by friction in structural and non-structural components. While there are many sources of advice on vibrations in structures, assessment is not straight- forward. In simple cases, structures should be designed so that their natural frequency is greater than 4.5Hz to help prevent the structure from being dynamically excitable. Special cases may require tighter limits. A simplified method of calculating the natural frequency of a structure (fin Hz) is related to the static dead load deflection of the structure, where g is the acceleration due to gravity, 8 is the static dead load deflection estimated by normal elastic theory, k is the stiffness (k = L/EI), mis the total mass of the system, Eis the modulus of elasticity, /is the moment of inertia and / is the length of the member. This method can be used to check the results of more complex analysis. Member Estimate of natural frequency, of General rule for structures with concentrated mass General rule for most structures with distributed loads Simplified rule for most structures Simply supported, mass concentrated in the centre Simply supported, sagging, mass and stiffness distributed Simply supported, contraflexure, mass and stiffness distributed Cantilever, mass concentrated at the end Cantilever, mass and stiffness distributed Fixed ends, mass and stiffness distributed =e Vint For normal floors with span/depth ratios of 25 or less, there are unlikely to be any vibration problems. Typically problems are encountered with steel and lightweight floors with spans over about 8m Source: Bolton, A (1978).