Parametric study on cable safety of cable-stayed bridge considering ultimate and fatigue limit states

Abstract

This paper deals with a parametric study on safety of stay cables of cable-stayed bridges considering the factors affecting their ultimate and fatigue strengths. Currently, safety factor of 2.5 is used for the design of cable-stayed bridges in Japan but this safety factor has not been verified for various loading effects and unexpected damage conditions. The aim of the study is to clarify the safety and reliability of stay cables of cable-stayed bridges at various loading and structural conditions. For that, a finite element model of cable-stayed bridge is developed and static analysis is performed to explain how live load intensity, cable loss and corrosion affect the ultimate and fatigue demand to capacity ratios of stay cables. A probabilistic based reliability analysis is also performed to validate the deterministic finite element analysis results which indicates that the structural reliability solutions are rational and reasonable.