Elastic Stability Behavior of Self-Anchored Suspension Bridges by the Deflection Theory

Abstract

To investigate the elastic buckling behavior of self-anchored suspension bridges subjected to proportionally increasing dead loads, a new stability procedure is proposed based on the deflection theory. For this purpose, a finite element buckling analysis is performed using the initial state solution based on the unstrained length method (ULM) (Ref. 1 ). The finite element solutions are compared with those by the deflection theory. It is shown that both the main girder and tower of the self-anchored suspension bridge are under compression, but their fundamental buckling modes are tower-dominant. Importantly, it is observed that local buckling within the main girder supported by hangers occurs without any geometric change of the main cable, in the higher buckling modes of the self-anchored suspension bridge.

Modified Deflection Theory for Preliminary Design of Self-Anchored Suspension Bridges

“…Until 2015, Jung et al (2015) just derived a deflection theory for the self-anchored suspension bridge considering the initial fabrication camber and tower flexural stiffness. Based on this theory, they further investigated the elastic stability behaviour of the bridge (Jung et al, 2017). On the other hand, a few numerical analyses (Kim et al, 2002;Kim et al, 2006;Romeijn et al, 2008;Han et al, 2009;Kim and Kim, 2012;Sun et al, 2015;Kim et al, 2019;Zhuang et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2022), mainly based on the finite element method (FEM), have been conducted for the self-anchored suspension bridge, but they are too demanding for the preliminary design.…”

Ultimate Capacity of Narrow Type Steel Box Section for Railway Self-Anchored Suspension Bridge Under Bias Compression

“…However, this is not the case. To investigate buckling behavior of the stiffening girder for self-anchored suspension bridges, deflection theory was derived by Jung et al [4] and Hu et al [5]. When the main beam is tied to the main cable through slings, the conclusion obtained is that any girder-dominant buckling mode does not globally occur in this type of bridge.…”