Software Tool for Wind Design of Cable Stayed Bridges

This paper outlined the theoretical background of the necessary steps of wind design of long span bridges. To this end the overall process was spitted into the characterisation of the air flow and corresponding aerodynamic coefficients by means of the DVM. The second step was to evaluate the different design checks with the previously calculated coefficients. Several tests for the steady state coefficients predicted a good applicability for the full scale model. Comparisons of the flutter prognosis with wind tunnel test as well as numerical simulations showed a good agreement. The overall analysis was performed within one software package. The advantage of this approach was that the same cross sections can be used as basis for the structural analysis and the CFD calculation. Moreover, the data exchange between different analysis tasks was simplified and accelerated. Thus the application of such an all-in-one solution significantly improves the efficiency of design tools for long span bridges.