Secondary Development of ANSYS Software to Calculating Sunshine Temperature Stress of Hollow Pier

Abstract

For hollow but high bridge piers, single side sun exposure causes great temperature stress. Currently, the bridge specifications of each countries have different regulations on hollow pier’s temperature load, partly can only reference to the temperature gradient curve of box girders, but the errors might be large sometimes. This paper gives a method to calculate the hollow pier’s temperature field and stress that caused by solar radiation, a method which can consider any region, any season and any time. A secondary development is also applied to reinforce ANSYS software, and the aforementioned functions is embedded in the ANSYS GUI.