Title: Effect of structural control on wind fatigue mitigation in suspension bridges

Authors: Luca Martinelli; Marco Domaneschi

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy ' Department of Structural, Geotechnical and Building Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24, 10129 Torino, Italy

Abstract: Vibrations induced by wind actions are regarded as one of the sources of fatigue failures for the structural steel members of long-span bridges. This work deals with structural control solutions, namely passive and decentralised semi-active ones, which can give a significant contribution in mitigating such effects. The selected control strategies, which were optimised in a previous research work on a validated finite element model of an existent suspension bridge, are herein evaluated for controlling wind induced fatigue problems in the steel deck. Standard deviation of the bending moment along the bridge deck, in association with local stresses in structural details, is recognised as a parameter related to fatigue damage accumulation. The proposed control strategies demonstrate able to significantly reduce such damage. Furthermore, passive and semi-active solutions have comparable effectiveness in terms of mitigating damage due to fatigue.

Keywords: structural control; wind; fatigue; bridge deck.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTRUCTE.2017.089386

International Journal of Structural Engineering, 2017 Vol.8 No.4, pp.289 - 307

Accepted: 08 May 2017
Published online: 22 Jan 2018 *

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