Design for the Crossing Over the River Mersey (UK): Suspension Bridge

As part of a larger research aimed at studying the aerodynamic and aeroelastic behaviour of single box decks for long-span suspension bridges in order to provide general guide lines of preliminary design, the new crossing over the River Mersey in the Liverpool area (UK) is presented as a case- study. The research focuses on three generic cross-sections characterized by a different nose. Bridge deck preliminary design is performed according to Eurocode 1 and 3; static wind tunnel tests on the bridge deck are carried out in order to acquire pressure coefficients. Static force coefficients are obtained through the integration of the mean pressure distribution on the deck surface. Aeroelastic wind tunnel tests were performed in order to acquire flutter derivatives. FEM analyses are performed on the full scale model using forces time histories evaluated with aerodynamic coefficients obtained from pressure coefficients. Critical flutter velocity is calculated in order to study the global bridge instability. Results are presented.