The final project workshop was held on 22 Jun 2018 at the University of Warwick. Of the 26 attendees, half were from industry with other half from universities.

The workshop programme included talks about use of FRP composites in structural engineering, developing design guidelines, industry's take on challenges in design against dynamic actions, and project outputs on the dynamic properties of footbridges made of FRPs. There was also information and discussion about the vibration performance under human and train buffeting actions and design of an unconventional and intentionally lively footbridge made of pultruded FRP shapes. The presentation files can be downloaded from this page.

In addition, a visit to the Lab provided opportunity to walk over a brand-new FRP footbridge, and experience (and take a view on) the bridge liveliness. Figures 1 and 2 show vertical vibrations (in the vibration mode at 2.5Hz) measured at the midspan as caused by workshop participants (also called Test Subjects here, TS). The TSs crossed the footbridge at their normal walking speed, one person at a time. Figure 3 shows relationship between rating of vibration (on the scale 0-10, where 0 means that "vibration is not felt" whilst 10 represents "extreme vibration for a structure"). Data scatter illustrates large differences in individual's perception of vibration, as expected. It should be said that the vibration quoted represents the peak value measured rather than the peak value perceived by each person (the latter depends on the spatial position at any time instant). Figure 4 shows a test participant crossing the bridge.

Figure 1: Midspan response for Group 1			Figure 2: Midspan response for Group 2
Figure 3: Vibration rating			Figure 4: Crossing the bridge

Comments and discussions during the workshop provided invaluable insight into challenges faced by both industry and academia working with FRP composites, and we hope this will lead to exchange of ideas and developing collaborations in the future.

Photos from the Workshop