Managing vibration is a core engineering task in the built environment. We use monitoring, mathematical modelling, immersive simulations and imaginative damper design, to help clients anticipate and mitigate the vibration issues that may shape the user experience of their buildings and facilities. 

Our insights not only deliver better performing structures – we challenge traditional, carbon-intensive approaches to make stability sustainable. We inform designs that meet both performance goals and carbon targets. This may involve trimming out material from designs or unlocking the use of lightweight alternatives like timber.

Different challenges, immersive tools

Our team represents every sub-discipline within vibration engineering, allowing us to match the right expertise and tool to the project and issue. We have authored many of the tools and algorithms we use ourselves and refined their accuracy against monitoring data. This investment in new approaches and technologies is helping our clients to navigate their design choices with greater confidence.

For example, data and reports give the facts, but to simulate the experience of vibration from different design options, we have created our own tool. Our Motion Platform combines data from designs and environmental factors to give clients a real-time, immersive experience of the vibration effects building users will experience. We combine our Motion Platform with sound enabled virtual reality to fully simulate the reality of these forces.

People at a nightclub - Arup's Motion platform is used to measure acceptable vibration levels
On this project, the Motion Platform was used to simulate high levels of vibration resulting from crowds at a dance club. Arup designed mitigation to improve conditions using the Motion Platform.
Arup's Motion Platform is often combined with sound and VR to create a fully immersive environment for the user. In this case it's being used for research to develop guidance on acceptable vibration levels.

Low vibration, high performance

For scientific and medical facilities, vibration is more than an issue of comfort or safety. To operate effectively, the instruments and equipment vital to the work of these facilities need an environment where vibration is minimal. Following traditional approaches to minimising vibration leads to costly, carbon-intensive groundworks. It is not uncommon for these facilities to have concrete foundations two meters deep. We work from first principles to create more imaginative responses to these needs, proving the required stability in more sustainable ways.

An expert perspective

Alongside vibration issues, sensitive instruments need environments where electromagnetic fields, temperature, air currents and acoustics are actively controlled. We regularly collaborate with colleagues in these disciplines, and in mechanical services design to provide a single, comprehensive solution to the creation of high-performance environments.