Feasible Range for Midtower Lateral Stiffness in Three-Tower Suspension Bridges
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 3
Abstract
This study investigates the structural characteristics of midtowers in three-tower suspension bridges and proposes a direct approach to determining feasible midtower stiffness for preliminary designs. The lateral stiffness analysis of bridges demonstrates the feasible midtower stiffness is located in a range that can be obtained using a simplified multispan suspension bridge model. This study also defines dimensionless midtower stiffness, and a parametric analysis is carried out in it to examine the effects of different parameters, including the sag-to-span ratio, side-to-main span ratio, dead-to-live load ratio, span length, and traffic load, on the range of dimensionless midtower stiffness. The results illustrate that the range of dimensionless midtower stiffness relies mainly on the dead-to-live load ratio and the sag-to-span ratio. The dimensionless stiffness chart derived from the study is generic and provides an estimate of the feasible midtower stiffness of three-tower suspension bridges with different design parameters.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities-China (WUT: 2015IVA015) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 51708436, 51408249, and 51608408).
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 23 • Issue 3 • March 2018
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 28, 2017
Accepted: Sep 11, 2017
Published online: Dec 18, 2017
Published in print: Mar 1, 2018
Discussion open until: May 18, 2018
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