Vibration behavior of an overhead conductor under updraft winds

At present, the wind-induced response analysis of an overhead conductor is mainly based on the action of horizontal normal wind. However, for crossing hillsides or extremely strong winds, such a conductor will bear the action of updraft wind, which will change the geometry of the conductor and make its structural dynamic characteristics nonlinear to some extent. In this work, the in-plane and out-of-plane two-dimensional nonlinear equations were established under the action of self-weight and updraft wind. Furthermore, the improved equations of conductor tension and sag were obtained, and the wind-induced vibration response was further investigated. The results showed that the updraft wind caused the nonlinearity of the tension and sag of the overhead conductor, and the nonlinear geometric change significantly affected its resonance response, which exceeded 25% if the wind speed was 50 m/s. In addition, because the proportion of the resonance response in the total wind-induced response was different, the influence of the wind attack angle calculated using the gust response factor method on the gust response factor was slightly larger than that calculated using the the American society of civil engineers method.

Wind loads and effects on rigid frame bridges with twin-legged high piers at erection stages

This article presents a procedure for analyzing wind effects on the rigid frame bridges with twin-legged high piers during erection stages, taking into account all wind loading components both on the beam and on the piers. These wind loading components include the mean wind load and the load induced by the three turbulence wind components and by the wake excitation. The buffeting forces induced by turbulence wind are formulated considering the modification due to aerodynamic admittance functions. The buffeting responses are analyzed based on the coherence of buffeting forces and using finite element method in conjunction with random vibration theory in the frequency domain. The peak dynamic response is obtained by combining the various response components through gust response factor approach. The procedure is applied to Xiaoguan Bridge under different erection stages using the analytic aerodynamic parameters fitted from computational fluid dynamics. The numerical results indicate that the obtained peak structural responses are more conservative and accurate when considering the effect of each loading component on the beam and on the piers, and the roles of different loading components are different with regard to bridge configurations. Aerodynamic admittance functions are source of the important part of the error margin of the analytical prediction method for buffeting responses of bridges, and buffeting responses based on wind velocity coherence will underestimate the results.