Cable force adjustment and post-adjusting nonlinear analysis of a cable-stayed bridge based on ANSYS

In the analysis of the live load nonlinearity and ultimate bearing capacity of a cable-stayed bridge, the planned construction state or the completed state of the bridge must be first obtained by adjusting the cable forces; then, further analysis for the next load step can be done by adding loads to the structure of this kind state. To achieve this aim, the paper re-develops an ANSYS-based finite element program, which takes the large displacement effect, ^p-Δ effect and cable sag effect into account, by using APDL in ANSYS software and the virtual temperature load method for cable force adjustment. A cable-stayed bridge test model is computationally analyzed for its cable force adjustment and the follow-up nonlinearity under live loads. The analysis results are in good accord with the experimental ones, which verifies that the program is reasonable and practicable for the calculation of adjusting cable forces and the nonlinear analysis of post-adjusting cable-stayed bridge can be done in the very same model.