LAUSR

The present work is aimed at studying the structural health status of Hunan Road Bridge, which is currently the widest concrete self-anchored suspension bridge in China. The monitoring data included the structural deformations, internal forces, and vibration characteristics from April 2015 to April 2016 were analyzed to evaluate the structural changes and safety. The influences brought by the ambient temperature changes and the dual effects composed of concrete shrinkage & creep (S&C) and seasonal temperature changes were analyzed based on the measured data. The long-time effects of concrete S&C were predicted using the CEB-FIP 90 model and the age-adjusted effective modulus method based on the ANSYS beam finite element model. The measured data showed that the transverse displacements of towers were more significant than the longitudinal ones. The spatial effect of the extra-wide girder is significant, which performs as the longitudinal stresses change unevenly along the transverse direction. The seasonal ambient warming caused overall increases in girder compressive stresses, and the cooling resulted in decreases along with significant temperature gradient effects. The prediction results show that the cable anchoring positions at girder ends and tower tops will move towards the mid-span affected by concrete S&C. In terms of the middle region of mid-span girder, significant increases in longitudinal stresses of top plate and decreases in the ones of bottom plate will be caused by the significant deflection. Comprehensively, the increases in the girder compressive stresses of side-span bottom plate and mid-span top plate are worthy of attention when confronted with extreme high temperature during the bridge service life cycle.