The central buckle, which is often used in a suspension bridge, can improve bridges' performance in the actual operation condition. The influence of the central buckle on natural vibration characteristics and bridge-deck driving comfort of a long-span suspension bridge is studied by using a case study of Siduhe Suspension Bridge in China. Based on the finite element software ANSYS and independently complied program, the influence of the central buckle on the structure force-applied characteristics of a long-span suspension bridge has been explored. The results show that the huge increases of natural frequencies can result in the presence of central buckles because of the increases of bending and torsional rigidities. The central buckle basically makes the stiffening girders and cables within the triangular area covered as a relatively approximate rigid area. Hence, the central buckle can reduce the torsional displacement of the main girder. However, the increases of bending and torsional rigidities have little influence on the impact factor, which is obtained by using vehicle-bridge coupled vibration analysis. This means that the central buckle has little effect on the comfort indices. In addition, it is found that the central buckle can enhance the bridge deck's driving stability due to the decrease of the torsional displacements of the main girder.
A3D finite element model(FEM)with realistic field measurements of temperature distributions is proposed to investigate the thermal stress variation in the steel–concrete composite bridge deck system.First,a brief literaturereview indicates that traditional thermal stress calculation in suspension bridges is based on the2D plane structure with simplified temperature profiles on bridges.Thus,a3D FEM is proposed for accurate stress analysis.The focus is on the incorporation of full field arbitrary temperature profile for the stress analysis.Following this,the effect of realistic temperature distribution on the structure is investigated in detail and an example using field measurements of Aizhai Bridge is integrated with the proposed3D FEM model.Parametric studies are used to illustrate the effect of different parameters on the thermal stress distribution in the bridge structure.Next,the discussion and comparison of the proposed methodology and simplified calculation method in the standard is given.The calculation difference and their potential impact on the structure are shown in detail.Finally,some conclusions and recommendations for future bridge analysis and design are given based on the proposed study.
