Conceptual Design and Technical Response to a Tea-leaf Shaped Pylon of the 2nd Daxing Cable Stayed Bridge in Ya'an

The 2nd Daxing Bridge in Ya'an, a concrete single tower cable-stayed bridge designed to be a landmark for the city, shows a special aesthetic design of the pylon which broke with the traditional tower forms of cable-stayed bridge. Taking local cultural symbol-tea and Ya Fish as the sources of inspiration, it uses separate double tower columns in the longitudinal which connected by transverse beams to form the tower as a whole spindle shape and the asymmetric arrangement of the tower columns demonstrates China's unique ideology - Yin and Yang. The tea-leaf shaped tower form brings many challenges and particular issues of technical design. In order to achieve its unique aesthetic effect, the factors from artistic perspective which influence the pylon have been analysed with finite element analysis method. Through the comparison of schemes and calculation, steel box girder scheme is suggested to the design and some structural solutions are proposed.