Aeroelastic Analysis of Bridge Girder Section using Computer Modeling

摘要

This report describes the numerical simulation of wind flow around bridges usingthe Finite Element Method (FEM) and the principles of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Computational Structural Dynamics (CSD). Since, the suspension bridges are prone to the aerodynamic instabilities caused by wind this becomes a prime criterion to be checked during the design. If the wind velocity exceeds the critical velocity for flutter that the bridge can withstand, then the bridge fails due to the phenomenon of flutter. Tacoma's narrows bridge failure in Washington, USA is a classical example of this failure. Larsen and Walther (1997) used the Discrete Vortex Method (DVM) similar to the wind tunnel procedures. In this work, the computations are carried out for both the fixed and the moving bridge conditions.