Coordination of groups jumping to popular music beats

Abstract

Prediction of coordinated dynamic loads induced by groups and crowds of people remains one of the most significant problems faced by designers of grandstands in entertaining venues, such as stadia and concert halls. Available guidance portrays humans as deterministic robot-like force generators moving at a single frequency with either perfect synchronisation or with random phases. Humans are not robots, and natural variability and imperfect synchronisation of individuals point to a random approach for crowd loading. This research aims to tackle this challenging topic by studying, measuring and quantifying coordination between force signals measured from 15 individuals jumping to a selection of popular pop and rock songs with different dominant beats. The results show a lack of strong synchronisation pattern between individuals in a group at all given songs and rhythms. However, there is a moderate level of synchronisation at songs with predominant beats in the range 2-3 Hz.