Experimental Uncertainty Quantification of Flutter Derivatives for a PK Section Girder and Its Application on Probabilistic Flutter Analysis
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 25, Issue 7
Abstract
Aerodynamic flutter instability could lead to the catastrophic collapse of flexible long-span bridges and needs to be prevented. This study investigated the variability of eight experimentally measured flutter derivatives (FDs) for a commonly used a Pasco–Kennewick (PK) section girder using a free vibration technique in a wind tunnel, which provided some new insights into the identification of FDs and supplemented the reliability analysis for buffeting and flutter performance. The aerodynamic uncertainties in terms of the dispersion of flutter coefficients were studied and two implications behind the extraction of FDs were discussed. The statistical and probabilistic behaviors of FDs at different reduced wind speeds were examined before generating sufficient independent random samples using the Monte Carlo (MC) approach. The intercorrelations between experimental FDs quantified by correlation coefficients were also examined and were employed to randomly sample the correlated FDs. The probabilistic flutter solutions in terms of critical wind speed propagated from the FDs uncertainties were studied utilizing step-by-step analysis, which resulted in several multimodal probability distributions of flutter onset. In addition, the role played by each FD on the variation of critical wind speed was discussed.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC0809600, 2018YFC0809604), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51778495, 51678436, 51678451), and the Research Project of State Key Lab of Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji University (SLDRCE 14-B-01).
Disclaimer
The opinions, findings, and conclusions present in the study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 7 • July 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 20, 2019
Accepted: Jan 10, 2020
Published online: Apr 21, 2020
Published in print: Jul 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Sep 21, 2020
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