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ABSTRACT
natural frequencies and mode shapes, of the structure and
A long-term ambient vibration survey on the Fred Hartman carry out a comparative analysis of these values with results
Bridge in Texas is in progress primarily to monitor stay cable of a finite element analysis and a short-term ambient vibra-
vibration. Part of this project includes efforts to better under- tions survey (AVS) that was carried out immediately follow-
stand the overall wind performance and the modal character- ing the completion of the bridge. This paper also includes
istics of the structure. A PC-based data acquisition system examples of measurements and findings from stay cable
was installed on the bridge to monitor deck and stay accel- instrumentation.
erations, wind speeds/directions and meteorological data
during the three-year test program. One of the primary tasks DESCRIPTION OF THE BRIDGE
in this process was the identification of structural frequencies
and mode shapes under a wide range of meteorological and Opened to traffic in 1995, the Fred Hartman Bridge (Figure
operating environments. The statistical distributions of the 1-a) connects the industrial towns of La Porte and Baytown
modal frequencies of the structure have been obtained from in Texas. It is a twin deck cable-stayed bridge with a center
the locations of the peaks of the power spectra. In addition, span of 1250 ft. and two side spans of 482 ft. The decks are
the frequencies, as well as mode shape estimates, have composed of precast concrete slabs on steel girders and
been compared to a finite element (FE) model of the struc- each of which is 78 ft. wide, carrying four lanes of traffic. The
ture, showing reasonable agreement. This paper will sum- decks are carried by a total of 192 cables, arranged in four
marize findings from the efforts described above, as well as inclined planes, and are connected at 50 ft. intervals. The
describing relevant data from stay cable measurements. twin deck structure and the layout of the cables can be
clearly seen in Figure 1-b.
INTRODUCTION
DATA ANALYSIS
(a) (b)
Figure 2: RMS acceleration vs. wind speed for a) deck accelerometer at midspan and b) deck accelerometer at AS16.
(a) (b)
Figure 3: Typical power spectrum graphs for a) the vertical deck acceleration at midspan and b) the in-plane
accelerations at a stay-cable.
Figure 3-c: A closer view of the power spectrum curve for deck at midspan in [0,1] Hz range.
The modal characteristics of long-span bridges play an im- histogram of deck frequencies for modes up to 1 Hz that was
portant role in various applications of bridge engineering. obtained using this database. The locations of peaks in this
Examples of these applications are aerodynamic analysis histogram indicate the presence of modal frequencies. It is
and health monitoring of bridges, both of which use the mo- evident from Figure 4 that the modal frequencies are distrib-
dal characteristics as a basis of their analysis. Considering uted in specific ranges along the frequency axis. To under-
that these applications are crucial in design and mainte- stand this phenomenon in detail, a closer view of histograms
nance of long-span bridges, it is important to better under- for the first four modes is given in Figures 5-a and 5-b. It is
stand the underlying characteristics of the modal parame- important to note that modes 1 and 2 (Figure 5-a) are first
ters. Motivated by this idea, a part of this project involves the bending modes with in-phase and out-of-phase motions of
long-term full-scale measurements of deck vibrations for the the decks, respectively. Similarly, modes 3 and 4 are differ-
purposes of understanding the overall wind performance and ently phased second bending modes. A distribution of 0.05
modal characteristics of the structure. Modal frequencies Hz in frequencies for these modes, corresponding to 17%
and mode shapes are statistically determined and these and 12% of the mean values respectively, can be seen in
values are compared with values obtained from FE analysis these histograms. Studies to better understand the effects of
and a short-term AVS. For brevity, the results presented physical and meteorological conditions as well as processing
herein will focus on the first 20 modes. techniques on this variability are currently underway. How-
ever, this range of values suggests that the inherent variabil-
The spectral database, described in the previous section, ity of modal frequencies should be carefully considered in
provides an easy tool for obtaining statistical properties of applications which use modal characteristics.
modal frequencies and mode shapes. Figure 4 shows the
TABLE 1: Comparison of measured deck modes with FE analysis and short-term AVS.
Mode-1: 0.286 Hz Mode-3: 0.366 Hz Mode-7: 0.556 Hz
Figure 6: Comparison of the first three in-phase vertical deck mode shapes obtained from FEM analysis
and long-term measurements.
In general, good agreement of modal frequencies is ob- As a preliminary analysis of the collected data, statistics
served between the measurements and the FE analysis. As were routinely computed for each channel in every record
discussed previously, statistical approach used in the long- and stored in a relational database to allow for easy analysis
term measurements is unable to pinpoint distinct frequencies of correlations between the various statistical quantities us-
for very closely spaced modes. This is also true for esti- ing queries. Observations of the vibration characteristics and
mates made by the short-term AVS for higher modes; the their correlation with wind speed, wind direction, and rainfall
closely spaced modes are identified only by a single fre- have been presented using the statistics in this database
quency value for most of the modes beyond the 15 th mode. (Main and Jones 1999). Figure 7 shows a resulting plot of
in-plane vibration amplitude (1-minute RMS acceleration) vs.
In the long-term measurements, the mode shapes are also wind speed (1-minute mean). The bulk of the large-
found using a statistical approach that is similar to the case amplitude responses occur for wind speeds between 10 and
of modal frequencies. Using queries created in the spectral 28 mph; the precise limits vary from stay to stay. A general
database, the amplitudes of power spectrum curves for each trend of increasing vibration amplitude with wind speed is
mode can be readily found, which are used to plot the re- evident. Figure 8 shows a plot of in-plane RMS acceleration
spective mode shapes. Figure 6 shows the comparison of vs. mean wind direction. Most of the large-amplitude re-
computed vertical mode shapes with the long-term meas- sponses occur over a fairly narrow range of wind direction,
urement results. All the values are normalized to have a between 25 to 70 degrees. A wind direction of zero degrees
maximum value of unity. corresponds to wind from the north, and 90 degrees corre-
sponds to wind from the east; Stay AS9 inclines to the north,
STAY CABLE VIBRATION MEASUREMENTS and thus it is evident that most of the large amplitude re-
sponses occur for wind directions where the cable declines
The stay cables of the Fred Hartman Bridge have frequently in the direction of the wind. The largest amplitude vibrations
exhibited problematic large-amplitude vibrations during con- were associated with rainfall.
ditions of wind and rain. This type of vibration problem has
been observed on numerous cable-stayed bridges around A second round of analysis of the data sets focused on the
the world, and vibration suppression has become a signifi- spectral content of the vibrations for selected stays. It was
cant consideration in cable-stayed bridge design and for observed that the highest responses occurred mostly in the
retrofit of existing structures. A primary objective of the in- lower modes and seemed to “lock on” to a specific mode of
strumentation efforts on this bridge was to obtain measure- vibration over a wide range of wind speed (Main and Jones
ments of these large-amplitude vibrations at full-scale in or- 2000). Figure 9 is a plot of vibration amplitude (5-minute
der to develop a better understanding of the vibration char- RMS acceleration) versus wind speed (5-minute mean), with
acteristics and the underlying excitation mechanisms. Nu- different symbols to indicate the dominant mode. The domi-
merous events of large-amplitude vibration were recorded nant mode was identified from the highest peak of the accel-
before the installation of a vibration mitigation system, and eration PSD, scaled to account for the accelerometer loca-
this paper presents statistics generated from a preliminary tion. It is evident that in almost all of the large-amplitude
analysis of these records of unrestrained vibration. Although responses over a wide range of wind speeds, mode 2 is the
19 stay cables were instrumented, for brevity this paper will dominant mode. Other stays also exhibit preferential re-
focus on data from one specific stay labeled AS9, with a sponses in a specific mode, although the preferred mode is
length of 285 feet and a fundamental frequency of 1.25 Hz. different for different stays, and some stays exhibit more
than one preferred mode.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
REFERENCES
Figure 9. Vibration amplitude vs. wind speed [2] Main, J.A. and Jones, N.P., A Comparison of Full-Scale
with dominant mode indicated by symbol. Measurements of Stay Cable Vibration, Proceedings Struc-
tures Congress 2000 - ASCE, Philadelphia, May 2000.