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Non-conventional Cable System in Multi-span Cable-stayed Bridges

Conference Paper · September 2018

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 40th IABSE Symposium, 19-21 September 2018, Nantes, France.
Tomorrow’s Megastructures

Non-conventional Cable System in Multi-span Cable-stayed Bridges

Clara Cid, Aitor Baldomir, Santiago Hernández
Structural Mechanics Group, School of Civil Engineering, Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

Contact: clara.cid.bengoa@udc.es abaldomir@udc.es

Abstract
The design of multi-span cable-stayed bridges requires the control of horizontal displacements on
the towers head when unbalanced loads are applied on deck. There are several strategies to
reduce these displacements, being one of them the use of crossing stay cables in a central section
of each main span. Based on this bridge typology, a general methodology to obtain the optimum
cable system has been developed. Number of cables, anchor position of cables on the deck, cable
areas and presstressing forces are considered design variables simultaneously into the
optimization process. Each cable anchor position is associated to an independent design variable,
allowing overlapping stay cables, different spacing of cables along the deck as well as different
number of cables on each side of the same tower. Queensferry Crossing has been chosen as
application example where the final design achieves an important saving in cable steel.
Keywords: multi-span; cable-stayed bridge; crossing stay cables; optimum design; overlapping stay
system

[3-15]. Although some major enhancements were

1 Introduction
The construction of multi-span cable-stayed
bridges has improved considerably in recent years.
Relevant examples are the Erqi Yangtze River
Bridge, the Jiashao Bridge, the Millau Viaduct, the
Ting Kau Bridge or the Queensferry Crossing. The
main difficulty when designing this bridge
typology is the significant sway of the interior
towers resulting from unbalanced live loads
applied on deck. Consequently, the moments at
the base of these towers increases and the vertical
deflection in the deck in aggravated. Several
strategies were proposed to address this issue
[1,2].
In the existent literature there is an extensive
research related to the optimization of different
parameters in single-span cable stayed bridges
made on multi-span cable-stayed bridges in the
last years, no optimization strategies were
performed to improve their cable system, being
the cable positions as well as the number of cables
fixed design parameters [16-18].
The goal of this research is to propose a general
optimization approach to obtain the optimum
number, anchor positions, cross-sectional areas
and post-tensioning cable forces in the cable
system. For that purpose, each cable anchor
position on the deck is associated to an
independent design variable allowing overlapping
stay cables in main spans. Therefore, the cables
may have different spacing along the deck and the
number of cables may not be the equal each side
of the same tower, unlike pre-existing approaches.

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Tomorrow’s Megastructures

Figure 1. Geometry of the generic finite element model

Figure 2. Nomenclature considered for the bridge model

connection from the mesh, making possible that
2 Problem definition the cable anchor position on the deck is
considered as design variable.
2.1 Bridge structural model
A generic model of a four span cable-stayed 2.2 General definition of the optimization
bridge was defined. The geometry definition as problem
well as the nomenclature used are shown in The mathematical optimization problem can be
Figures 1 and 2. expressed as follows:
As can be seen in Figure 2, the number of cables in NC
the half length of the bridge (NC) will be the sum min V ( x , x , x )  2    xiE  xiA  Li ( xiP )  (1a)
i
E
i
P
i
A

of cables in the side span (NS) and the cables in i 1

the main span (NM = NM1 + NMC1 + NMC2 + NM2).
A generic 2D finite element model was defined
using the commercial software Abaqus[19]
through a Python script. The structural analysis
type adopted for the Abaqus FE model is
nonlinear taking into account the beam-column
effect (important in deck and towers), P-Δ effect
and cable sag effect.
Cables-deck and cables-tower connections were
designed as “tie” constraints, realising the
rotational degree of freedom of cable nodes but
guaranteeing zero displacement between both
entities. These constraint entities make
independent the cable-deck and cable-tower
subject to:
g j ( xiE , xiP , xiA , xiF )  0 i  1,..., N C 
 (1b)
j  1,..., m 
being V the steel volume in the cable system. The
design variable xiE represents a binary variable
used to define the existence of the ith cable, and
xiP, xiA and xiF are the design variables associated
to the cable anchor position on the deck, cross
sectional area and prestressing force, respectively.
Li is the length of the ith cable, which depends on
the anchor position on the deck and gj refers to
the jth design constraint.

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Tomorrow’s Megastructures
Figure 3. Nomenclature of design variables
Figure 3 shows a general scheme of the bridge
model and the corresponding design variables for
each cable. As can be seen, cables belonging to
the crossing zone (LMC) are grouped by pairs (e.g.
x7A and x1A), sharing the same anchor position on
the deck (x7P). As a result, both cables can exist
(leading to a V-configuration), only one of them or
none of them.
3 Optimization strategy
As presented in Section 2.2, four design variables
have been assigned to each cable. The most
intuitive approach would be consider xiE as a
discrete variable, taking the values 0 (cable does
not exist) and 1 (cable exists) and using a Mixed
Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) method,
such as the GA of MATLAB [20], that manages
discrete and continuous variables simultaneously.
The strategy would be to define a large number of
cables in each cable region defined in Figure 2.
Doing so, some of the existence variables would
correspond to a zero value, meaning that the
number of cables initially considered was enough.
However, as stated in [13] the use of this specific
algorithm is inefficient when considering a large
number of design variables of different nature.
Consequently, a different approach consisting of
using continuous variables exclusively was
followed. That is, the discrete variables xiE were
suppressed and the cable existence was taking
into account by setting the lower bound of the
cross-sectional areas to value very close to zero
(10−6 m2). This allows the use of a gradient-based
optimization algorithm, following the previous
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strategy of using an initial design with a large
enough number of cables in each span. All the
cables that tend to its minimum area will be
considered as non-existent cables. As each pair of
cables in the crossing zone will share the cable
anchor position, the number of design variables
xiP will be lower than NC, being this number
NP=NC−NCM2. As a result, the total number of
design variables (position, area and prestressing
force) is NT=NP+2NC.
The Sequential Quadratic Programming algorithm
(SQP) implemented in the MATLAB function
fmincon was used as optimization tool method. At
each iteration of the optimization process, a
parametrized Python script is firstly updated with
the new values of the design variables and then
externally run through the software Abaqus [19]
to obtain the structural responses and evaluate
the design constraints.
4 Application example: the
Queensferry Crossing
The Queensferry Crossing Bridge is the longest
three tower cable-stayed bridge in the world, with
a total length of 2638 m. The part corresponding
to cable-stayed bridge is 1950 m long with two
main spans of 650 m, two lateral spans of 325 m
and three towers around 200 m high. A monolithic
connection exists between the deck and the
central tower while the lateral towers only
restraint the vertical displacement of the deck
[21]. The deck is also anchored on V-piers placed
at the beginning and 104 m inwards the side span,
allowing exclusively the rotational degree of
freedom (Figure 4).
The projected bridge has a total of 288 cables
distributed in two cable planes. The number of
cables in each deck region is listed in Table 1. As a
2D finite element model of the bridge was chosen,
only one plane of cables was considered.
Therefore, the values of area and prestressing
forces must be distributed in the two cables
defined in the bridge project.
 40th IABSE Symposium, 19-21 September 2018, Nantes, France.
Tomorrow’s Megastructures

Figure 4. Distribution of cables in the real bridge.

Table 1. Cables in the half length of the bridge.

Side span Main span (NM)

NC
(NS) NM1 NMC1 NMC2 NM2

72 24 14 10 10 14

The material used for cables and deck is steel with

E=200 GPa and n=0.3, and concrete for towers
and piers, with E=35 GPa and n=0.2. The
mechanical properties of the deck and tower
sections are shown in Table 2. The dimensions of
the tower vary linearly between the sections at Figure 5. Load cases.
the base (C-C), at the deck level (B-B) and at the
As initial design equally spaced cables have been
top (A-A).
assumed in each span and a unique value of area
Table 2. Mechanical properties of the bridge and prestressing force is assigned for all the
cables. The initial number of cables is presented in
A-A B-B C-C Cables Deck Table 3 as well as the initial area value and
Des. prestressing force. The total number of design
A(m2) 22.10 32.81 56.65 2
Var. variables for each optimization problem are listed
in Table 4.
Iz(m4) 118.83 411.61 1658.71 - 200
Table 3. Cable system used as starting point
Iy(m4) 57.91 193.21 1386.67 - 7.6
NM A0
NC NS F0 (kN)
Load cases considered are shown in Figure 4. A NM1 NMC1 NMC2 NM2 (m2)
uniform load of 200 kN/m was applied in the deck 60 20 2 18 18 2 0.03 11,160
to represent the dead load as well as a live load of Table 4. Number of design variables considered
102.5 kN/m (Spanish regulation of bridges [22]).
xiP xiA xiF Total
4.1 Definition of the optimization problem 42 60 60 162

The real bridge has a length crossing zone
LMC=146m with equally spaced cables, which
results in a total amount of steel in the cable
system of 759 m3 (5958 tons).
The purpose of this research is to find out if by
modifying the value of the crossing length new
cable distributions appears and the cable weight
can be decreased. For that purpose, a value of
length crossing zone (LMC) almost equal to the
total length of the main span (LM) was considered
(LMC=640 m).
4.2 Formulation of the optimization
problem
The optimization problem is formulated in Eq. (2).
In Table 5 are summarized the limit values defined
below for each design constraint, being k the load
case and LS=325 m, LM=650 m, and HT=200 m. The
minimum distance between cables in deck is
dmin=2 m.

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Tomorrow’s Megastructures

Table 5. Limit values for design constraints

Side Span Main Span
u0max ukmax sM sC,deck sT,deck sC,tower sT,tower
w0max wkmax w0max wkmax
(m) (m) (MPa) (MPa) (MPa) (MPa) (MPa)
(m) (m) (m) (m)
LS/7500 LS/500 LM/7500 LM/500 HT/7500 HT/500 0.45fpk 200 300 35 3.2

NC length of the bridge (NC*) corresponds to 23, value


min V  2   xiA  Li ( xiP )  (2a) substantially lower compared to the real bridge
i 1
(NC=72).
subject to:
Table 6. Minimum volume of cable steel
0   k ( xi )   M (2 b)
Real bridge Optimum design
wkj  wmax
k
(2c) 759 m3 634.15 m3
k
utower ,p
 umax
k
(2d) Table 7. Final number of cables at the optimum
k  0,..., 5 i  1,..., N C j  1,..., N D p  1, 2, 3 Main Span (N*M)
* Side Span
N C
 C , deck   top
k
, deck , j
  T , deck  (N*S) N*M1 N*MC1 N*MC2 N*M2
 (2e)
23 6 0 7 10 0
 C , deck   bottom
k
, deck , j
  T , deck 
Figure 6 shows the initial configuration and the
j  1,..., ED k  0,..., 5
resulting layout of the cable system. In Table 8
 C ,tower   left
k,p
tower , l
  T ,tower  appears the initial and final anchor position of the
 (2f ) cables that survives after the optimization.
 C ,tower   right
k,p
  T ,tower 
tower ,l
Significant changes are observed between initial
l  1,..., ET k  0,..., 5 p  1, 2, 3 and final values of xiP. In that table are also
summarized the numerical values of the optimum
xi 1  xi  d min i  1,...N P  1 (2g)
areas and prestressing forces.
Regarding to the final cable arrangement, a subset
The tensile stress in cables and normal stresses in of cables emerge from the central tower top until
deck and towers (Eqs. (2b), (2e) and (2f)) are the border of the length crossing zone. This is
evaluated in ultimate limit-state (ULS) (Eq. (3b)) consistent from an engineering point of view,
while vertical displacements of the deck and since these cables contribute to reduce the sway
horizontal displacements of the tower tops (Eqs. of the central tower. Moreover, some cables tend
(2c) and (2d)) must satisfy the serviceability limit- to cluster near the V-piers placed 104 m inwards
state (SLS) (Eq. (3a)). the side span keeping the minimum distance of 2
SLS :1.0× (Dead Load) +1.0× (Live Load) (3a) m (Eq. (2g)). These piers act as anchor points
allowing high stability of lateral towers. The center
ULS :1.35× (Dead Load) +1.35× (Live Load) (3b)
of main span is supported by two groups of cables
that emerge from the lateral and central tower,
4.3 Numerical results without crosses between them. This cable layout
has many similarities with the Ting Kau Bridge.
The optimum cable steel volume appears in Table
6. As can be seen, the volume of cable steel The main difference is that not all cables are
reduces up to a 16.45%, corresponding to a placed at the boundary of the length crossing zone
volume of 634.15 m3, substantially lower than the (LMC), but two other cables appear defining V-
759 m3 of the projected bridge. Table 7 configurations. Additionally, cables are not equally
summarizes the total number of cables that spaced along the deck. Thus it can be concluded
remain in each deck zone after the optimization that the optimum solution leads to a hybrid design
process. The total number of cables in the half between the adopted in the Ting Kau Bridge and

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Tomorrow’s Megastructures

Figure 6. Initial configuration (upper) and optimum cable distribution (bottom) with LMC=640 m
Table 8. Initial and final cable positions in deck, cable areas and prestressing forces at the optimum
Side Span (NS) Main span crossing zone - tower 1 (NMC1)
Cable
5 6 7 8 11 15 2 3 5 6 8 9 10
0,P
xi (m) 65.00 81.25 97.50 113.75 162.50 227.50 397.37 431.05 498.42 532.11 599.47 633.16 666.84

xi f,P(m) 63.02 86.96 102.74 104.74 162.65 229.46 414.45 436.34 499.88 523.35 589.31 618.95 649.01
A 2
xi (m ) 0.0337 0.0036 0.1000 0.1000 0.0230 0.0594 0.0281 0.0311 0.0122 0.0514 0.0624 0.0784 0.0322
F
xi (kN) 17025 1435 38433 38143 11492 34700 11535 11260 3103 14246 16122 24469 13569

Main span crossing zone - tower 2 (NMC2)

Cable
1 2 3 11 12 13 14 16 17 18
xi0,P(m) 363.68 397.37 431.05 700.53 734.21 767.89 801.58 868.95 902.63 936.32
xi f,P(m) 330.00 414.45 436.34 708.63 726.14 769.85 798.65 873.05 892.62 932.32
xi A(m2) 0.1000 0.0217 0.0421 0.0593 0.0457 0.0487 0.0121 0.0403 0.0275 0.0036
F(kN) 51114 11301 21837 23853 18556 20362 4369 20128 15636 2227
xi

the Queensferry Crossing.

The final values of design variables are presented
in Figure 7. The blue colour makes reference to
the cables anchored to the lateral tower and the
green colour to the cables anchored to the central
tower. The final area values and presstresing
forces of the existent cables are presented
through bar graphs, using the same colour code.
The design constraints at the optimum are shown
in Figure 8. The active constraints correspond to
axial stresses for the LC 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, vertical
displacement in the deck in lateral and main spans
for DL and exclusively in main spans for the LC 4
and 5. The horizontal displacement of the central
tower head is also active for LC 2, 4 and 5.
Deformed shape of the deck for each LC appears
in Figure 8 where the maximum vertical
displacement (1.3 m) is an active constraint for
many points in main spans (LC4 and LC5).
5 Conclusions
This research presents a general approach to
optimize the cable system in multi-span cable-
stayed bridges. The optimum number of cables as
well as their anchorage positions, areas and
prestressing forces were obtained, guaranteeing a
lower steel volume in cables regarding the
solution of overlapping cables in center of main
spans. The main advantage of this methodology is
to formulate the problem avoiding the use of
binary variables (cable existence). Therefore we
can take advantage of the efficiency of gradient-
based optimization algorithms (SQP) which
include a considerable number of design variables
(162) and design constraints (16293).

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Figure 7. Cable positions in deck, cable areas and prestressing forces at the optimum

Figure 8. Constraints at the optimum

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 40th IABSE Symposium, 19-21 September 2018, Nantes, France.
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