READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based om Reading
Passage 1 below.
THE BRIDGE THAT SWAYED
When the London Millennium footbridge was opened in June 2000, it swayed
alarmingly. This generated huge public interest and the bridge became known as
London’s “wobbly bridge. ”
The Millennium Bridge is the first new bridge across the river Thames in London
since Tower Bridge opened in 1894, and it is the first ever designed for pedestrians
only. The bridge links the City of London near St Paul’s Cathedral with the Tate
Modern art gallery on Bankside.
The bridge opened initially on Saturday 10th June 2000. For the opening
ceremony, a crowd of over 1,000 people had assembled on the south half of the
bridge with a band in front. When they started to walk across with the band
playing, there was immediately an unexpectedly pronounced lateral movement of
the bridge deck. “It was a fine day and the bridge was on the route of a major
charity walk,” one of the pedestrians recounted what ho saw that day. “At first, it
was still. Then if began to sway sideways, just slightly. Then, almost from one
moment to the next, when large groups of people were crossing, the wobble
intensified. Everyone had to stop walking to retain balance and sometimes to hold
onto the hand rails for support.” Immediately it was decided to limit the number of
people on the bridge, and the bridge was dubbed the ‘wobbly’ bridge by the media
who declared it another high-profile British Millennium Project failure. In older to
fully investigate and resolve the issue the decision was taken to close the bridge on
12th June 2000.
Arup, the leading member of the committee in charge of the construction of the
bridge, decided to tackle the issue head on. They immediately undertook a fast-
track research project to seek the cause and the cure. The embarrassed engineers
found the videotape that day which showed the center span swaying about 3 inches
sideways every second and the south span 2 inches every 1.25 seconds. Because
there was a significant wind blowing on the opening days (force 3-4) and the
bridge had been decorated with large flags, the engineers first thought that winds
might be exerting excessive force on the many large flags and banners, but it was
rapidly concluded that wind buffeting had not contributed significantly to vibration
of the bridge. But after measurements were made in university laboratories of the
effects of people? walking on swaying platforms and after large-scale experiments
with crowds of pedestrians were onducted on the bridge itself, a new understanding
and a new theory were developed.
The unexpected motion was the result of a natural human reaction to small lateral
movements. It is well known that a suspension bridge has tendency to sway when
troops march over it in lockstep, which is why troops arc required to break step
when crossing such a bridge. “If we walk on a swaying surface we tend to
compensate and stabilise ourselves by spreading our legs further apart but this
increases the lateral push”. Pat Dallard, the engineer at Arup, says that you change
the way you walk to match what the bridge is doing. It is an unconscious tendency
for pedestrians to match their footsteps to the sway, thereby exacerbating it even
more. “It’s rather like walking on a rolling ship deck you move one way and then
the other to compensate for the roll.” The way people walk doesn’t have to match
exactly the natural frequency of the bridge as in resonance the interaction is more
subtle. As the bridge moves, people adjust the way they walk in their own manner.
The problem is that when there are enough people on the bridge the total sideways
push can overcome the bridge’s ability to absorb it. The movement becomes
excessive and continues to increase until people begin to have difficulty in walking
they may even have to hold on to the rails.
Professor Fujino Yozo of Tokyo University, who studied the earth-resistant Toda
Bridge in Japan, believes the horizontal forces caused by walking, running or
jumping could also in turn cause excessive dynamic vibration in the lateral
direction in the bridge. He explains that as the structure began moving, pedestrians
adjusted their gait to the same lateral rhythm as the bridge; the adjusted footsteps
magnified the motion just like when four people all stand up in small boat at the
same time. As more pedestrians locked into the same rhythm, the increasing
oscillation led to the dramatic swaying captured on film until people stopped
walking altogether, because they could not even keep upright.
In order to design a method of reducing the movements, an immediate research
program was launched by the bridge’s engineering designer Arup. It was decided
that the force exerted by the pedestrians had to be quantified and related to the
motion of the bridge. Although there are some descriptions of this phenomenon in
existing literature, none of these actually quantifies the force. So there was no
quantitative analytical way to design the bridge against this effect. The efforts to
solve the problem quickly got supported by a number of universities and research
organisations.
The tests at the University of Southampton involved a person walking on the spot
on a small shake table. The tests at Imperial College involved persons walking
along a specially built, 7.2m-long platform, which could be driven laterally at
different frequencies and amplitudes. These tests have their own limitations. While
the Imperial College test platform was too short that only seven or eight steps
could be measured at one time, the “walking on the spot” test did not accurately
replicate forward walking, although many footsteps could be observed using this
method. Neither test could investigate any influence of other people in a crowd on
the behavior of the individual tested.
The results of the laboratory tests provided information which enabled the initial
design of a retrofit to be progressed. However, unless the usage of the bridge was
to be greatly restricted, only two generic options to improve its performance were
considered feasible. The first was to increase the stiffness of the bridge to move all
its lateral natural frequencies out of the range that could be excited by the lateral
footfall forces, and the second was to increase the damping of the bridge to reduce
the resonant response.
Questions 14-17
Choose FOUR letters, A-I. Write the correct letters in boxes14-17 on your answer
sheet.
Which FOUR of the following could be seen on the day when the bridge opened
to the public?
A. the bridge moved vertically
B. the bridge swayed from side to side
C. the bridge swayed violently throughout the opening ceremony
D. it was hard to keep balance on the bridge
E. pedestrians walked in synchronised steps
F. pedestrians lengthened their footsteps
G. a music band marched across the bridge
H. the swaying rhythm varied to the portions of the bridge
I. flags and banners kept still on the bridge
Questions 18-23
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet.
To understand why the Millennium Bridge swayed, engineers of Arup studied the
videotape taken on the day of the opening ceremony. In the beginning they thought
the forces of 18._________________ might have caused the movement because
there were many flags and banners on the bridge that day. But quickly new
understandings arose after series of tests were conducted on how people walk on
19. _________________floors. The tests showed people would place their legs
20._________________ to keep balance when the floor is shaking. Pat Dallard
even believes pedestrians may unknowingly adjust their 21.___________________
to match the sway of the bridge. Professor Fujino Yozo’s study found that the
vibration of a bridge could be caused by the 22.________________ of people
walking, running and jumping on it because the lateral rhythm of the sway could
make pedestrians adjust their walk and reach the same step until it is impossible to
stand 23.__________________________

Questions 24-26
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet

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