CASE STUDY ON PERFORMANCE MONITORING AND STABILITY ANALYSIS OF BAISHIHU SUSPENSION BRIDGE AND SIDE SLOPE

The main structure of the Baishihu suspension bridge was connected to the anchor foundations by three main steel cables. The wooden pedestrian deck was fixed to the main steel cables using steel beams and was stabilized by two stabilizing cables. The stabilizing cables and bridge body were joined by 44 steel connecting rods. Therefore, the slope stability at the anchorage foundations of the main steel cables, as well as the performance monitoring and analysis of the main steel cables and stabilizing cables, are critical to the overall performance of the suspension bridge. This paper discusses the performance monitoring and analysis of the steel cable deflection and cable strength for this bridge, as well as the main considerations and results of the stability analysis of the bridge abutments and side slopes of the two banks. Water-level observation wells, inclinometers, and tiltmeters monitoring were used to record reference data for the analysis of the slope stability performance. Additionally, the three-dimensional dynamic analysis program VFIFE was used to analyze the deformation and motion of the bridge. The final steady-state results were used to compare the static design value and monitoring data. The dynamic response before the final steady state was also observed.

An application of physics: simply supported bridges made of post-tensioned concrete and structural steel beams

Bridges represent an important application of physics capable of solving real transportation problems. Knowledge of convenience of different mechanical solutions when analyzing and designing bridge is needed. For these reasons, this work is focused on the study of convenience of using two types of bridges. Simply supported short-medium span bridges (30 m to 45 m) are usually excessively long when choosing reinforced concrete solutions and usually short for other types of structures such as cable-stayed or cantilever bridges. The suitability of simply supported bridges leads to the need of studying their cost benefit ratios. This work studies the cost benefit ratio for post-tensioned concrete beams and structural steel girders in simply supported straight bridges. Eight models built of type I sections were used in both cases to analyze the bridges using a software based on the stiffness method. Span of each bridge was set to 30 m, 35 m, 40 m, and 45 m. The convenience of each type of bridge was done comparing the total and the cost per linear meter of each solution (post-tensioned and structural steel). Comparison was done using material consumption, labor, and construction processes costs only. Also, allowable vertical displacement given by current bridge design standards was verified.

Experimental study of composite concrete cellular steel beams

The main objective of this study is to compare the structural behavior of composite steel– concrete beams using cellular beams with and without steel ring stiffeners placed around the web openings. An IPE140 hot rolled I-section steel beam was used to create four specimens: one without openings (control beam); one without shear connectors (non-composite); a composite steel–concrete beam using a cellular beam without strengthening (CLB1); and a composite steel–concrete beam using a cellular beam (CLB4-R) with its openings strengthened by steel ring stiffeners with geometrical properties Br = 37mm and Tr = 5mm. CLB1 was fabricated with openings of 100mm diameter and a 1.23 expansion depth ratio, while CLB4-R was fabricated with openings of 130mm diameter, a 1.42 expansion depth ratio. Both beams were 1700mm in length with ten openings. The results of this experiment revealed that the loads applied to CLB1 and CLB4-R at deflection L/360 exceeded the load applied to the control specimen at the same deflection by 149.3% and 177.3%, respectively. The results revealed that the non-composite beam had an ultimate load 29% lower than that of the control beam. The ultimate load on CLB1 was 5.3% greater than that of the control beam, and failure occurred due to web-post buckling. While the ultimate load of the CLB4-R beam was 18.43% greater than that of the control beam, the Vierendeel mechanism was indicated as the failure mode.

Crack prediction in beam-like structure using ANN based on frequency analysis

The dynamic experimental and numerical analysis of cracked beams has been studied with the aim of quantifying the influence of depth crack on the dynamic response of steel beams. Artificial Neural Method ANN has been used where a numerical simulation was improved in Matlab. A finite element model has also been developed by using the Ansys software, and the obtained results were compared with exact crack length. The study takes into account different hidden layer values in order to determine the sensitivity of the predicted crack depth. The results show that the response of the beam (frequencies) is strongly related to the crack depth which significantly affects the beam behavior, especially when the crack is very deep where the ANN allows us to identify the crack in lower computational time. Based on the provided results, we can detect that the effect of hidden layer size can affect the results.