Numerical Simulation of Flow over Mountainous Valley Terrain

Abstract

With the increase of the span length of bridge, the wind field characteristics at bridge site play crucial role for the safety of bridge. The present paper discusses the results of a numerical simulation of the wind flow over mountainous area called Aizhai, located in Hunan province, where a super long span bridge with main span of 1176m will be constructed. The results indicate that it is inappropriate to describe the mean wind velocity profiles by power law using the same roughness exponent along the span wise direction in the mountainous valley terrain. The speed-up effect and the significant change in wind direction of the mean flow were observed, which provide the information necessary for determining the design wind speed such as for a long span bridge across the valley.