Design for the Crossing Over the River Mersey (UK): Suspension Bridge

摘要

As part of a larger research aimed at studying the aerodynamic and aeroelastic behaviour of singlernbox decks for long-span suspension bridges in order to provide general guide lines of preliminaryrndesign, the new crossing over the River Mersey in the Liverpool area (UK) is presented as a casestudy.rnThe research focuses on three generic cross-sections characterized by a different nose. Bridgerndeck preliminary design is performed according to Eurocode 1 and 3; static wind tunnel tests on thernbridge deck are carried out in order to acquire pressure coefficients. Static force coefficients arernobtained through the integration of the mean pressure distribution on the deck surface. Aeroelasticrnwind tunnel tests were performed in order to acquire flutter derivatives. FEM analyses arernperformed on the full scale model using forces time histories evaluated with aerodynamicrncoefficients obtained from pressure coefficients. Critical flutter velocity is calculated in order tornstudy the global bridge instability. Results are presented.