Elastic Stability Behavior of Self-Anchored Suspension Bridges by the Deflection Theory

To investigate the elastic buckling behavior of self-anchored suspension bridges subjected to proportionally increasing dead loads, a new stability procedure is proposed based on the deflection theory. For this purpose, a finite element buckling analysis is performed using the initial state solution based on the unstrained length method (ULM) (Ref. 1 ). The finite element solutions are compared with those by the deflection theory. It is shown that both the main girder and tower of the self-anchored suspension bridge are under compression, but their fundamental buckling modes are tower-dominant. Importantly, it is observed that local buckling within the main girder supported by hangers occurs without any geometric change of the main cable, in the higher buckling modes of the self-anchored suspension bridge.