Main Cable Safety Factors Assessment of Long-span Suspension Bridges Based on Inverse Reliability Method

Authors presented main cable safety factors assessment of long-span suspension bridges based on inverse reliability method.This method which both considered influence of uncertainty factors among structure parameters and satisfied prescribed main cable reliability level was used to get inverse main cable safety factors through target reliability indexes.Main cable safety factors of suspension bridges with main span ranging from 2 000 m to 5 000 m were estimated using the proposed method.The results show that parameters uncertainty has a major effect on main cable safety factor of suspension bridges.Ignoring parameters uncertainty will produce overes-timation of main cable safety factors.