An emerging research topic in civil engineering is the dynamic interaction between crowds
and structures. Structures such as footbridges, which oscillate due to the crossing of a
group of pedestrians, or stands within stadia or concert halls, which vibrate due to the
rythmic movement of the audience are of particular interest. The objective of this study
is twofold: modelling the movement of pedestrians with consideration of
pedestrian-pedestrian, and pedestrian-obstacle interactions, and the incorporation of a
pedestrian-structure coupling in the previous model. Frémond’s model, which allows us to
simulate the movement of an assembly of particles and accounts for collisions among
considered rigid particles, is presented and adapted to the crowd by giving a willingness
to the circular particles, which allows each pedestrian to move according to a given
target. To handle the crowd-structure interaction in the case of lateral oscillations of
footbridges, the Kuramoto differential equation governing the time evolution of the
lateral motion of each pedestrian is implemented in the previous model. Preliminary
results obtained from numerical simulations are presented and discussed.