NUMERICAL COMPUTATION OF UNSTEADY AERODYNAMIC FORCES FOR LONG-SPAN BRIDGE WITH TWO-EQUATION TURBULENCE MODEL

Abstract

As a first step to evaluate the applicability of the two-dimensional RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes) simulation to the prediction of unsteady aerodynamic forces for long-span bridges, the k-ω SST turbulence model has been newly implemented in the 2D flow code. The newly developed code was validated using cases for unsteady flowfields around airfoils undergoing large-amplitude motions. It was then applied to compute the unsteady aerodynamic forces for a long-span bridge with shallow hexagonal cross section. Fairly good agreement was obtained between numerical results and experimental data It indicated that the application of the present method to the prediction of unsteady aerodynamic forces for long-span bridges is quite promising.