Cable-stayed and suspension bridges are two major types of cable-supported bridges, which can sustain long spans. In view of its inherent flexibility and relative low structural damping, a cable-supported system is known to be highly susceptible to wind excitations, In this connection, aerodynamic response is the utmost important consideration for the design of long-span cable-supported bridges. This dissertation concerns with the methodology of aerodynamic response analysis for long-span cable- supported bridges in the time domain via the finite element technique....[ Read more ]

Cable-stayed and suspension bridges are two major types of cable-supported bridges, which can sustain long spans. In view of its inherent flexibility and relative low structural damping, a cable-supported system is known to be highly susceptible to wind excitations, In this connection, aerodynamic response is the utmost important consideration for the design of long-span cable-supported bridges. This dissertation concerns with the methodology of aerodynamic response analysis for long-span cable- supported bridges in the time domain via the finite element technique.

To account for the geometric nonlinearity of long-span bridges, an efficient nonlinear finite element model has been developed. In the model, the bridge components are represented by a catenary cable element and a hybrid beam element. To determine the aerodynamic response of the bridge in the time-domain, an efficiently space-marching transform technique to simulate the temporal-space correlated wind velocities along the bridge spanwise, the aerodynamic forces expression and the related algorithm are proposed. Practical applications have demonstrated that the mathematical model established in this study is computationally quite efficient. The proposed method is especially suitable for the analysis of cable-supported bridges.