New Hanger Design Approach of Tied-Arch Bridge to Enhance Its Robustness

Abstract

As the crucial components among the tied-arch bridge, the local failure of hangers may trigger a progressive collapse through the entire tied-arch bridge. However, the current design guidance as regards hangers still lacks consideration of structure robustness under an extreme hazard. To improve the structural robustness of tied-arch bridge under extreme conditions, a new hanger design method is proposed, which is termed as asymmetric parallel double-hanger system. Based on Miner’s linear cumulative damage law, an analysis on the fatigue life of the double-hanger system was conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposal, and then a dynamic time-history analysis was employed to simulate the transitory fracture impact due to one or more hangers fracturing. According to the simulation results, the structural robustness is greatly enhanced with asymmetric parallel-double hanger system design, when compared with single hanger system design. When one or more hangers reveal local damage, it will not trigger a progress failure to the whole structure in particular. Several practical suggestions of bridge system’s load-carrying capacity are also put forward for the future arch bridge design at the end of this paper.