Aerodynamic Stability Analysis of Twin-girder Bridge Decks

• Published in: Transactions (Hong Kong Institution of Engineers) Vol. 16; no. 4; pp. 20 - 27
• Main Authors: Yau, Doris M S, Hui, Michael C H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 01-01-2009
• Subjects: Flutter; Flutter Derivatives; Stonecutters Bridge; Twin-girder Bridge Decks
• DOI: 10.1080/1023697X.2009.10668171
• EISSN: 2326-3733
• ISSN: 1023-697X

The 1,018 m span Stonecutters Bridge has adopted a twin-girder deck design with a wide clear separation of 14.3 m between the two longitudinal girders. Owing to its colossal span length, there is a need to thoroughly investigate the aerodynamic performance of this bridge. A series of wind tunnel experiments were conducted to address various aerodynamic issues arising from the design of Stonecutters Bridge. The results of the full bridge aeroelastic model tests indicated that Stonecutters Bridge would not show any signs of flutter instability within the verification wind speed of 95 m/s (1-minute mean). Although a number of studies have been conducted to investigate the aerodynamic performance of twin-girder deck, real life application of this type of deck is extremely limited. It is therefore desirable to test the sensitivity of the deck section to aerodynamic forces. One aspect of the sensitivity test is to work out the critical wind speed at the onset of flutter for twin-girder bridge decks with different gap widths. In this research, a total of 5 configurations of twin-girder bridge decks were studied. This paper presents the findings of this research.