Aerodynamic stability of iced stay cables on cable-stayed bridge

Abstract

Ice accretions on stay cables may result in the instable vibration of galloping, which would affect the safety of cable-stayed bridges. A large number of studies have investigated the galloping vibrations of transmission lines. However, the obtained aerodynamics in transmission lines cannot be directly applied to the stay cables on cable-stayed bridges. In this study, linear and nonlinear single degree-of-freedom models were introduced to obtain the critical galloping wind velocity of iced stay cables where the aerodynamic lift and drag coefficients were identified in the wind tunnel tests. Specifically, six ice shapes were discussed using section models with geometric scale 1:1. The results presented obvious sudden decrease regions of the aerodynamic lift coefficient for all six test models. Numerical analyses of iced stay cables associated to a medium-span cable-stayed bridge were carried out to evaluate the potential galloping instability. The obtained nonlinear critical wind velocity for a 243-meter-long stay cable is much lower than the design wind velocity. The calculated linear critical wind velocity is even lower. In addition, numerical analyses demonstrated that increasing structural damping could effectively mitigate the galloping vibrations of iced stay cables.