A Comprehensive Method of Determining Cable Force during Closure Condition for CFST Arch Bridge

Abstract

The steel tubular arch is hoisted segment by segment through cable crane and the stayed cables are used to maintain stability and balance. The determination of the stayed-cable forces and construction camber value of the erected rib segments becomes the key issue to ensure construction quality and safety. The forward iteration analysis method, which combines finite element method with optimization method as provided in this paper, can easily and effectively determine the stayed-cable forces and construction camber value in the erection of the rib segments, and the stay cables can be tensioned to their target force values only at one time. Finally, the example is demonstrated to prove the correctness and affectivity of the present method. Numerical example indicates that the results based on the method may be used to the backward analysis of the initial state, and that the proposed CM has excellent features of quick convergence rate and best global performance.