Wind Analysis of Long-Span Bridges Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

摘要

Wind loading is one of the critical parameters for the design of long-span bridges due to their inherent low stiffness and damping. The analysis of the dynamic behavior of long-span cable-stayed and suspension bridges under wind excitation is usually performed using wind tunnel testing. In the last two decades, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been gaining attention towards its general use in bridge design. From the late 1990s, the number of references in literature of numerical simulations of aerodynamic and aeroelastic problems in bridges has increased, and the accuracy in the simulations has enhanced due to improvements in modeling formulation, computer power, and software. The objective of this research is to utilize a commercial CFD software, ANSYS CFX, to study the response of two long-span bridges, namely a bluff-body and an aerodynamic shaped section, due to wind-induced instabilities, in particular, flutter. The first bridge is the bluff-body double-deck Bay Bridge in San Francisco and the second is the aerodynamic twin-deck Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong. Results are compared against wind tunnel test results.