Aerostructural Optimization of Long Span Bridges: Current Advances and Challenges

Abstract

This paper describes the evolution of deck shape of long span bridges since the Tacoma Narrows collapse trying to avoid undesirable aerodynamic behavior under wind flow and the trend in the last decades to increase the length of the main span of suspension and cable stayed bridges. The necessity to use advanced technologies to help the engineer to obtain the best possible design is highlighted and the advantages of applying optimization methodologies is encouraged. It is explained that this approach requires to use only numerical tools and hence to eliminate experimental studies, as wind tunnel tests using reduced models of full bridge of a segment of the deck, and their substitution by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. After doing so, the current capabilities of this approach are presented and, finally, the problems that need to be solved to have a fully operational methodology able to be implemented in real structures are outlined.