Study on the Main Cable Curve of Suspension Bridge Based on the Improved Particle Swarm Optimization (IPSO) Method

Abstract

Determining a reasonable main cable curve is the foundation of suspension bridge design, and the accuracy and efficiency of the curve-finding problem are key to the design of a suspension bridge. To accurately obtain the completed curve of a main cable, force equations, which are nonlinear equations, need to be solved. In this study, the improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm with inertia weight is presented to solve these nonlinear equations. Then, taking a double-tower three-span steel-box girder suspension bridge as the research background, the accuracy and efficiency of the IPSO method in finding the main cable curve are studied and then compared with those of the N-R iteration method and the finite element method (FEM). The results show that the proposed IPSO method has a high accuracy and a fast computing speed. Furthermore, the convergence under different bridge parameters is discussed, which demonstrates that the IPSO method has a strong adaptability.