Static behaviour of a five-span concrete filled steel tubular arch bridge

An 1810-meter-long tied rigid-frame concrete filled steel tubular arch bridge, Han River North Bridge in Chao-zhou City of Guangdong Province, China, was presented in this paper. It is composed of five continuous spans (85m+114m+160m+ 114m+85m), and no lateral braces are designed to all of the spans, which makes it becoming the one with the largest span (160m) without lateral braces of concrete filled steel tubular arch bridges in the world. Its arches are formed by the dumbbell-shape vertical CFST arch ribs and steel side arch ribs. To study the static behaviour of Han River North Bridge in different load cases, a finite element three-dimensional model was developed using the commercial analysis package ANSYS. A series of systemic investigations was carried out on some key issues, including the inner force distributions in the arch ribs, the influences by the side ribs on the lateral rigidity of the bridge; the influences of the number and location of the wind braces. The work done in this paper provided references for the optimized design and constructions of the bridge.