Pedestrian steel arch bridge with composite polymer deck

The paper presents the steel arch pedestrian bridge with composite polymer deck in the central span, concrete-steel concrete beams for access spans. The main arch girder is designed as a bent steel pipe with angle of inclination by 70° to the road surface. The deck of the main span is curved in plane with 400 m radius. Some aspects of the design studies are presented with description of respective analyses. A special attention is paid to the dynamics is paid to the dynamics, wind and thermal analysis.

Two problems regarding dynamics of the designed footbridge are also presented in this paper. A FEM based procedure for tuning of natural frequencies of the footbridge was developed and applied to avoid excitation from pedestrian dynamic loading. Basic concept of used procedure are presented together with brief description of modifications to the original design which were developed using this procedure. Second topic evaluated with regard to this unique construction was related to dynamic action of pressure wave caused by cargo truck passing underneath. Unsteady CFD simulations were performed to obtain aerodynamic load functions. These loads were used with structural dynamics transient calculation to obtain footbridge response. The influence of aerodynamic forces was evaluated in terms of pedestrian comfort and safety. Parametric study of the influence of vehicle speed, structure clearance, cabin deflectors and distance between lorries grouped in convoy is also presented.

• Summary

• 1. Introduction

• 1. Description of the bridge

• 3. Method of analysis

• 4. Frequency tuning of structure

• 5. Dynamic action of footbridge from compression wave of truck passing underneath

• 6. Conclusions

• References