Experimental and numerical evaluation of the wind load on the 516 Arouca pedestrian suspension bridge

Abstract

The present work analyses the wind load effects on the 516 Arouca bridge, the world's longest pedestrian suspension bridge in 2020. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to model a range of wind incidence angles between -8˚ and +8˚. The simulations were performed by solving the steady-state Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the k-ω shear stress transport (SST) model. The simulations were carried out for different bridge configurations to determine the influence of the upper guard of the tray deck and the suspended cables on the generated loads. The numerical results were validated by performing different wind tunnel tests using a reduced scaled prototype. The predicted aerodynamic characteristics showed good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, the drag forces obtained from the numerical analysis agree with the computed values from the Eurocode (NP EN 1991-1-4:2010) for different inlet wind velocities, ranging from 3.91 m/s to 52.84 m/s.