Aerostatic Wind Effects on the Sutong Bridge

The Sutong Bridge over the Yangtze River in China is a cable-stayed bridge spanning 1088 m. For such super long-span cable-supported bridges, the response induced by static wind is a key factor for structural wind-resistance design. The procedure for static wind induced response analyzing of large-span cable-supported bridge is presented and programmed in this work. Comprehensive calculation and analysis of static wind effects on Sutong Bridge are conducted. The influence of pile foundation, cables segmentation and participation in modes, different initial and added attack angle, different wind profile and flows on deck displacement, on pylon displacement, on different modes frequencies, and on critical wind velocities are investigated. The results show that the static instability wind velocity is high enough to meet the requirement. Among the whole wind loads of structure, the contribution of cables exceeds 40%, and the static wind velocity of instability will be overestimated by 20% without consideration of the added attack angle. If the foundation effect is not taken into account, the lateral bending will be severely underestimated. The characteristics of analytical fundamental frequencies of practical structure are similar to those of full bridge model in wind tunnel test.