An Improved Initial Force Method for Determining the Initial Configuration of Suspension Bridges

This paper presents an improved initial force method for determining the initial shape of suspension bridges. After determining the initial shape factors through the force equilibrium conditions of each hanging point, the initial force method was applied with the computed values, each node's coordinates, and unstrained lengths of the cable element as inputs. The unstrained length of each cable element was regarded as a fixed value in each iteration step, unlike in the typical initial force method. This method can be applied to 2D and 3D suspension bridge models. The validity of the present method was demonstrated by comparing the results of the numerical examples.