Constraint Analysis on the Steel Mid Tower of a Tri Tower Suspension Bridge

Abstract

A certain project of tri-tower suspension bridge of which the main span was 1080m was taken as a case study of the mid tower stability. A 3D beam FEM model has been carried out to investigate the global mechanical behavior of the bridge in which the internal force response to several different typical load cases were specifically concerned. Moreover, the cable spring stiffness to the mid tower was defined as the ratio of the initial horizontal forces acting on the top end of mid tower to the corresponding horizontal displacement. And the effect of this equivalent spring stiffness on the stability performance of the mid tower was compared to other tow constraint conditions to the tower including free constraint and pin constraint. The comparison showed that the cable equivalent stiffness was 4342kN/m when living load was acting along the whole main girder of the bridge while this value varied with different load cases. The difference between the effect caused by the cable spring stiffness and the free constraint was small indicating that the stability of the mid tower was not sensitive to the cable constraint. In addition, with the increase of the equivalent spring stiffness, the longitudinal buckling eigenvalue also became larger and gradually approached the condition of pin constraint.