Abstract
Accurate thermal properties are crucial for modeling the response of infrastructure to fire scenarios. While other researchers have contributed significant effort toward characterizing the thermal behavior of parallel-wire structural cable stays, no method has been derived explicitly for suspension bridge main cables, which are typically two orders of magnitude larger in cross section. These cables cannot be treated as monolithic steel sections due to the nature of their composition, and their thermal behavior is greatly influenced by voids and point contacts between their constituent cylindrical wires. This study derives the first empirically driven estimation of the effective bulk thermal conductivity of suspension bridge main cables using the data collected from thermal experimentation on a full-scale mock-up of the main cable panel (approximately 10,000 wires, 52 cm diameter, 6 m long) and gradient-based optimization of a representative finite-element model. Results show that the effective thermal conductivity of suspension bridge main cables is more than an order of magnitude smaller in the radial direction than in the axial direction and that the effective radial conductivity is an order of magnitude smaller than previous theoretical estimates have predicted. The resulting bulk conductivity serves as a useful tool for engineers and researchers because it allows a large, thermally complex geometry to be modeled as a simple monolith with orthotropic thermal conductivity properties.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Contract No. PARSONSCO CU17-1525) and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (Contract No. PARSONSCO CU17-2895), with Dr. D. Paskova (MTA) and Ms. L. Glodkowski (MTA) as project managers. The authors thank Mr. D. Khazem (Parsons Corporation) for his consulting expertise over the course of the project. The testing performed in this study was made possible by the Robert A. W. Carleton Strength of Materials Laboratory, a Columbia University research center. The authors especially thank the staff of the Carleton Laboratory—William Hunnicutt, Liming Li, Brannon Blanke, Freddie Wheeler Jr., and Travis Simmons—for their collaboration, cooperation, and facility support.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 27 • Issue 12 • December 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 15, 2022
Accepted: Aug 13, 2022
Published online: Oct 11, 2022
Published in print: Dec 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Mar 11, 2023
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Cited by
- Zhi Liu, Guo-Qiang Li, Ignacio Paya-Zaforteza, C. S. Cai, Qiao Huang, Fire Hazards in Bridges: State of the Art, Recent Progress, and Current Research Gaps, Journal of Bridge Engineering, 10.1061/JBENF2.BEENG-5790, 28, 7, (2023).