///PhD Defence Max Fritzsche
On 30 September, Max Fritzsche successfully defended his doctoral thesis on vertical human-structure interaction between pedestrians and vibration-prone footbridges.
Current design practice treats walking people as a moving force that does not respond to the motion of the bridge. Max showed that near resonance many people adapt their gait to the vibrating bridge and can even feed energy into it. His load model captures this interaction as amplitude-dependent damping that combines the passive damping of the human body with this active energy input.
Congratulations, Max! We are glad that you are staying at the institute, where you are taking over as head of our Structural Dynamics Unit (SDU) and will teach the Structural Analysis I and II courses. Many thanks to the assessors, Prof. Clemens Hübler and Prof. Jens Schneider, and to the examination committee.