Process-independent construction stage analysis of self-anchored suspension bridges

Abstract The construction process of self-anchored suspension (SAS) bridges undergoes frequent system transformations and loadings, accompanied by complex strong geometric and contact nonlinear behaviours. The accurate state assessment of such a process generally requires the nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) to perform a stage-by-stage forward, cumulative calculation based on the principle of incremental superposition. This sort of calculation means that the structural equilibrium of any intermediate state of the process, referred to as a construction stage, must be accumulated from its previous construction loading history, which is susceptible to computational effort and divergence limitations. This paper overcomes these limitations by proposing a direct and fast method that is independent of the cumulative calculation in the analysis of any specified construction stage, in favour of the construction optimization design and uncertainty analysis. The unstrained assembly formats for the typical construction process of SAS bridges are established, and the elements with constant physical quantities as the characteristic parameters are used to describe the various structures, boundaries, loads and their changes during the construction. On this basis, an interactive analysis framework integrating the numerical iteration with the FEA is established to achieve an accurate equilibrium for the construction stages. An enhanced interval-genetic algorithm (IGA) is employed as the optimization engine to smoothly accelerate global convergence. The proposed framework is applied to an SAS bridge under construction, and the validity and performance of this approach are demonstrated by considering the in-field test data.