PERFORMANCE-BASED WIND ENGINEERING AS A TOOL FOR THE DESIGN OF THE HANGERS IN A SUSPENSION BRIDGE

Abstract eng:
The modern design philosophy known as the performance-based design has earned the attention of the scientific community over the last two decades, especially in the fields of earthquake and fire engineering. Its general scheme entails the evaluation of the probability distribution of a decision variable, usually represented by an economic index. More recently, due to the increasing frequency of occurrence of windstorms and hurricanes with severe consequences in terms of economic losses and human lives, and the increasing number of slender structures (mainly, long span bridges, tall buildings, large roofing systems and telecommunication towers), the wind engineering community has been involved in the development of procedures for the optimal design of wind sensitive structures. Nowadays, it seems realistic that the probabilistic methodologies required by the performance-based design philosophy, that are already applied in other fields of engineering, may be adopted in wind engineering to optimize the structural design and prevent future losses. In this paper, the general framework of Performance-Based Wind Engineering is addressed. As an example, specific reference is made to the design of the hangers of a long span suspension bridge serving also railway traffic. The examined problem is how to take into account the cumulative fatigue damage due to both transit of trains and wind action, in order to prevent failure of hangers due to axial fatigue effects. Some aspects of the proposed methodology of performance-based design are thus illustrated with reference to the considered example case.

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