Proceedings of Bridge Engineering 2 Conference 2010 April 2010, University of Bath, Bath, UK

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SUTONG YANGTZE HIGHWAY BRIDGE, CHINA

Wenjun Xie1
1

Undergraduate Student University of Bath

Abstract: This paper gives a critical analysis of Sutong Yangtze Highway Bridge in China which is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. Aspect consideration includes the general background, aesthetic, construction, foundation and further analysis of loadings and strength which is according to BS5400:2. Keywords: Sutong Bridge, Cable-stayed, Yangtze River

1 Introduction Sutong Bridge is located in the southeast of Jiangsu province, which was complete in March 2008. It is crossing Yangtze River and 108 kilometers west of estuary where is the place always having disastrous weather. The wind speed in this area which exceeds 11m/s has about 179 days in one year; the mean annual rainy day is more than 120 and over 31 misty days. Sutong Bridge starts at the Xiaohai interchange of Tongqi highway in north and ends at the Dongbing interchange of Sujiahang highway in south. The overall program is made up of three dominating projects, the South Shore Connection Project, the North Shore Connection Project and the River Crossing Project. It is an important channel which not only develops the accessible between Suzhou and Nantong but also improves the national and Jiangsu Province trunk highway network.

Sutong Bridge designed as a cable-stayed bridge because of the complex and tough geological conditions that cannot use suspension bridge. This cable-stayed bridge supported with a dual concrete and steel tower with a main-span of 1088m, which is the world's longest cable stayed bridge. Besides, it has refreshed 3 another architectural records in the world at that time. The foundation of main pier consisted with 120 approximately 120m length and 2.5m diameter wide stake, which is the deepest bridge stake foundation. [2] Compared with Tataro Bridge in Japan with 224m height steel tower, the tower of Sutong Bridge archived 300.4m, which is the world's highest tower bridge. Furthermore, the longest cable stayed of Sutong Bridge reaches 577m, nearly 100m longer than that of Tataro Bridge. It is also the world's longest cable stayed applied in cable stayed bridge. The National Ministry of Highway organized a public bidding of the project in November 2001 in order to ensure they could achieve an outstanding project design which is world-class. The winner team is united with CCCC Highway Consultants CO.,Ltd., Jiangsu Province Communication Planning and Design Institution CO.,Ltd. and Tongji University. Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China started

Figure 1: The location of Sutong Bridge

Sutong Bridge planning since 1991. [1]

Wenjun Xie (wx206@bath.ac.uk)

The foundation of the main bridge started in June, 2003 and completed in March, 2008. The bridge is awarded the George S. Richardson Medal in the IBC (International Bridge Conference) in 2010.

bridge deck proportion. Sutong Bridge is a completely symmetry structure. The main section of Sutong Bridge has a well-coordinated in pier location. Both of the cable-stayed towers spanned 544m by the middle part and 300m by the side part respectively, which almost meet the Golden Ratio. The towers shaped a huge A and top part of tower from deck is a reversed Y shape, which also coupled with the slender appearance of bridge deck. Each cable-stayed tower is of high degree of

Figure 2: Overview of Sutong Bridge 2 Aesthetics Bridge aesthetics is a complex study with multi-level and multi-dimension. The ultimate goal of bridge design is to develop the aesthetic and resource effects of bridge and surrounding environment. In the main structural and traffic function on the basis of preservation, some vital elements of humanity include the features of age and the local cultural background should be reflected in the design. The essential criteria in considering the aesthetics of bridge can be divided into 4 parts to analyses: a) harmony and unity, b) the proportion of coordination, c) balance and stability, d) the appearance fluency. First of all, an excellent harmonious and unity bridge design means that the modeling of bridge can be well-coordinated with the environment of urban area beside the bridge. The site of Sutong Bridge is selected near the estuary of the Yangtze River. The surface of river in this region, which is with turbulent waves throughout the year, is 6 kilometers wide. The great bridge is towering across the broad river among the magnificent landscape, which looks like a rainbow between the riversides. It is evidence that the bridge has well integrated into the scenery. Furthermore, as the worlds second highest tower bridge, it not only tends to be a tremendous visual impact, but also provides accessible for the large cargo ship. Obviously, an aesthetically valued design for bridge is based on an appropriate proportion. Any unreasonable proportion between different elements of bridge (deck, tower, cable-stayed and pier) is impossible for aesthetic. [4] As can be seen from the history, the most successful bridge designs all over the world relied on a reasonable

symmetry, which makes the bridge appear more stable equilibrium. The shape of towers are similar with triangles with steel boxes be hung by the cable-stayed. The triangle structure partly highlights the contours, but principally represents stability. The reversed Y shape is taper down from the bottom to the top that let the position of center of gravity looks very low and two piers of the A shape tower results large moment are taken by the base which is looks more stable than just one pier. The fan-shaped cable-stayed groups also seemed can balanced the tension very well. Bridges are normally evaluated aesthetically for their simple and elegant structures, for example, the thinner deck which is suitable for its span proportion, the fluency of the structure and the powerful contour of structure. [4] The concrete girder looks really thin and light compare with the high tower and piers which is not messiness. Furthermore, the total length of the River Crossing Project is 8206m, the main span is just one-eighth of it and the back spans on both sides are support by alignments of twin piers. 2.1 Lighting In order to set out the majestic appearance of Sutong Bridge as it is the symbol for the connection between the two historical cities (Suzhou and Nantong), the designers comprehensively planed a night landscape lighting system. The system is divided into three parts: the tower lighting, the span lighting and the cable-stayed lighting. There is no paint covering the main towers, while the lighting design is extremely complex. Floodlights, which located at the outside and inside surface of towers, were used for a large-scale to outstanding the main part and levels. Frosted glasses are placed outside the lights at

the saddle slot of the top, which scattered the light naturally, to make it look like a pearl. The main span is decorated with arrays of metal halide lamps with spacing of 6 meters. These groups of lights outline the contours for the deck. As for the cable-stayed lighting program, the predominate concept is jagged effect for the cable-stayed appearance. By regularly placing light packet, which is of long lifetime, high brightness and high color cable-stayed. temperature on different position of

tower can partly resolve the problems of Sutong Bridge and also require a thorough analysis of static structural system and dynamic structural system. 3.1 Static Structural System Floating system is a basic static structural system of cable-stayed bridge and there is no support from the tower to the girder. Sutong Bridge chooses the elastic constraint system which is based on the floating system and adds lateral elastic constraint between the girder and tower. Having the lateral elastic constraint can reduce the bending moment at the base of tower and the horizontal displacement of the girder due to the live loading, longitudinal wind loading and automobile braking force. It also can reduce the axial force on the main girder cause by the temperature changes. [1] 3.2 Dynamic Structural System When the large span bridge withstands the big wind loading and earthquake, it is a good way to have a damping device between the girder and the tower to increase the damping rate of the bridge. The self-damping rate of a large span bridge is just about

Figure 3: Night view on the bridge However, depends on investment value (context, cost, safety and environmental issues), lighting system, which is able to allow the bridge to be viewed at night, should be carefully considered. [4] 3 Structural Design As the quick development of rapid transit network and urbanization process in China, the demand of large span cable-stayed bridges over rivers or sea are increased. Therefore, choose a logical structural system is the key point to guarantee the function and safety of long span cable-stayed bridge. The self-stiffness and self-damping of a long span bridge will decrease with the length of span increase. The main span of Sutong Bridge is over thousand meters which have lots of technical problems, such as the vibration of main girder causes by the automobile brake, axial force of main girder changes by the temperature changes and dynamic responses cause by the large wind loading and earthquake. By using the fan-shaped cable-stayed groups and reversed Y shape

2%~5% and will rise to about 20%~50% if have a damper, even more than 100% of some large damping device. The total displacement is the sum of the elastic displacement and the damping displacement. The output force by the damper let the girder has little displacement and no sways. Viscous damper can decrease the earthquake induced motion over 50% and also reduce the base shear and inter-story shear which is up to 40%. [5] There are eight viscous dampers on Sutong Bridge with four dampers on each of the tower. The damping force is in nonlinear relation with the speed and Eq. (1) shows there relationship. (1) C is the damping coefficient, V is the maximum reaction velocity and is the damping exponent with a value between 0.3 to 1.95. Sutong Bridge uses value of 0.4 to give a damping force of 3025kN. 4 Loading The loadings of Sutong Bridge have been analysed

via both Chinese Technical Standard of Highway Engineering (JTG B01-2003) and British Standard (BS 5400Part 2) and this paper just analyse loadings by BS 5400-2. There are 5 fundamental loadings must be considered in a bridge design: dead load, super-imposed dead load, live traffic load and load due to wind and temperature effect. Two partial safety factors, f3 and fl, need to be applied to these loadings and check a both serviceability limit state (SLS) and ultimate limit state (ULS) to make sure the serviceability of the bridge and prevent the overloaded failure respectively. The value of f3 is equal to 1.00 for SLS and 1.10 for ULS. [3] The static analysis of Sutong Bridge has used the computer software RM2000, QJX and BAP. [2] 4.1 Dead and Super-imposed Dead Loads Dead load is the load of all the structural materials of Sutong Bridge which include the main span, tower, back span and cables. The back span has used the prestressed continues reinforced concrete beam. The main span of back span is 268m with a weight of 3582000kg and the total weight of main span is approximate 48574000kg over 1088m which use a steel box girder. The partial safety factors, fl, of steel and concrete are used the values of 1.05 and 1.15 respectively for ULS. [3] The super-imposed dead load include the load of parapet, drain pipe, deck paving like asphalt, even-adjusting layer and lighting etc.. Take the un-factored super-imposed dead load by 62.5kN/m. Use partial factors of fl and f3of 1.75 and 1.10 for ULS. Table 1: The factored dead load and super-imposed dead load (SDL) Loads Main Dead Load SDL Span Back Span 62.5 1.75 1.10 120 131 1.15 1.00 151 UDL (kN/m) 438 1.05 1.00 fl f3 Design Load(kN/m) 460

17.5m which corresponding to 5 notional lanes and each notional lane with a width of 3.5m. [7]

Figure 4: Cross-section of the deck (in meter) There are two types of loading need to be considered for the live traffic loads: HA loading and HB loading. 4.2.1 HA Loading HA loading consists of both uniformly-distributed loading (UDL) acting over a notional and a knife edge load (KEL). According the Eq. (2). W 36( )0.1 kN
1

to

BS

5400:2

(6.2.3),

the

uniformly-distributed loading (UDL) of HA is given by

(2)

L is the loaded length of the bridge. The most adverse situation of bending moment on the deck of Sutong Bridge is loaded on the main span but not the back span with the loaded length of 1088m. Therefore, the unfactored UDL of HA is equal to 17.9kN/m per notional lane. The unfactored knife edge load (KEL) is taken as 120kN. The values of fl and f3 are taken to be 1.50 and 1.10 respectively for HA loading alone. Multiply the partial safety factors by the unfactored UDL and KEL to get the design load of 29.5kN/m for UDL and 198kN for KEL. The HA lane factors of Sutong Bridge are 1=1.0, 2=0.67, 3=4=5=0.6. 4.2.2 HB Loading The HB loading on a bridge represents an abnormal heavy load. The HB vehicle consists four axles and 16 wheels with a overall width of 3.5m. The distances between front two axles and back two axles are 1.8m and the inner spacing can be 6, 11, 16, 21 or 26m. The maximum unit number of HB loading is 45 with a unfactored load of 450kN on each axle equivalent to 112.5kN per wheel. The value of fl and f3 are taken to be 1.30 and 1.10 respectively and the design HB loading

4.2 Live Traffic Loads The deck of Sutong Bridge (Fig.4) carries a six-lane dual carriageway. The single carriageway has a width of

is 644kN fall within a single notional lane. Fig. 5 shows the worst case of combined HA and HB loadings on six lanes with a HB vehicle on the mid-span of Sutong Bridge.
Loaded length for intensity of HA UDL 25m Full HA No Loading HB Vehicle 25m No Loading Full HA

is 35.4m/s. The maximum wind gust, vd, can be calculated by Eq. (3). equal to 74.2m/s. There are four wind loadings need to be considered of Sutong Bridge: nominal transverse wind load, nominal vertical wind load, nominal longitudinal wind loads on deck and cables. 4.3.1 Nominal Transverse Wind Load The norminal transverse wind load, Pt, is acting perpendicular to the side of bridge deck and given by Eqs. (4,5). 1 0.613
2

1 1 2

(3)

If v equals to 35.4m/s and then the wind gust,vd, is

0.67HA: UDL=19.8kN/m KEL=133kN 0.6HA: UDL=17.7kN/m KEL=119kN 0.6HA: UDL=17.7kN/m KEL=119kN 0.6HA: UDL=17.7kN/m KEL=119kN Central reserve No loading for global analysis

Figure 5: Worst sagging case of combine HA and HB loadings 4.2.3 Secondary Live Loading According to the combined load case four, the secondary live loads need to be considered. The secondary live loads consist the horizontal centrifugal loading, longitudinal loading, accidental skidding and collision loadings. Sutong Bridge has a straight bridge deck which the horizontal centrifugal loading, Fc, can assume to be zero. The horizontal force of longitudinal loading is equal to 8 3.5 + 200 228kN and
0.25644 2

(4) (5)

q is the dynamic pressure head which is equal to 3376N/m2. A1 is the horizontal projected area which is 1088m 4m 43522 . According to BS 5400:2 (5.3.3.3), CD=1.18 which is the drag coefficient. Therefore, the norminal transverse wind load, P t, is equal to 15.9kN/m. 4.3.2 Nominal Vertical Wind Load The nominal vertical wind load, Pv, is a vertical wind load upward or downward on the bridge deck. This force is calculated by Eqs. (6,7). 3 3
20

80.5kN per

axle for HB loading. Accidental skidding loading is a 250kN point load on any point for only one notional lane associate with HA loading. Calculate the collision loading require a parapet impact test and gives a appropriate type of parapet for this bridge. An additional single vertical load of 175kN need to be applied over 3m length at the top of the parapet to determine the local effect of vehicles collision with high level of containment parapets.

(6) (7)

0.75 [1

(1 0.2)]

1088 41

446082 is the plan area.

The formula of lift coefficient, CL, is given by BS 5400:2 (5.3.5) which is 0.31. The nominal vertical wind load, Pv, is equal to 42.9kN/m. 4.3.3 Nominal Longitudinal Wind Load on the Deck

4.3 Wind Loading For long span cable-stayed bridge over thousand meters like Sutong Bridge, the wind loading always becomes a significant loading for the structural design of the bridge. Sutong Bridge is located close to the estuary of Yangtze River which is coastal climate region. The gale in this region is mainly due to typhoon, cool wave, cyclone and tornado. The maximum average wind speed

The nominal longitudinal wind load is the sum of the nominal longitudinal wind load on superstructure, PLS (Eq. (8)), and the nominal longitudinal wind load on live load, PLL (Eq. (9)). It also will act on the parapets and piers. 0.251 0.51 (8) (9)

Therefore, PLS is equal to 3.98kN/m and PLL is equal to 7.95kN/m. The nominal longitudinal wind load that

acts on parapets shows on Eq. (10). 0.8 (10) 24.65kN/m. The total nominal longitudinal wind load on the bridge deck is 3.98 + 7.95 + 0.8 15.9

395.6mm 10.9N/mm
2 2

(14) for concrete for steel

72.72N/mm

The steel will buckling due to the compressive 4.3.4 Nominal Longitudinal Wind Load on the cables For the cable-stayed bridge, the nominal longitudinal wind load on the cables plays a really important part of the total wind loadings. Sutong Bridge has 34 2 4 272 cables with lengths vary between 152.853m to 576.767m. There eight different specifications of these cables: PES7-139, PES7-151, PES7-187, PES7-199, PES7-223, PES7-241, PES7-283 and PES7-313.The biggest size of cable is PES7-313 with a diameter of 154mm. Eq. (11) shows the formula for the nominal longitudinal wind load.
1 2

stress. The bucking load is equal to 9.31GN which is calculated by Eq. (15). (15) According to BS 5400:2 (5.4.5), Fig.6 shows the temperature difference for bridge deck type 1.

(11)

The air density, , taken as 1.25kg/m3. D is the diameter of the cable that taken as 154mm and L is the length of the cable that taken as 577m which give the result of the nominal longitudinal wind load on a single biggest cable of Sutong Bridge, 4.4 Temperature Effects Temperature fluctuations are a significant effect during bridge design. There are two temperature effects will act on bridge: increase or decrease in the effective temperature of the bridge superstucture and temperature difference between top surface and bottom surface of the bridge superstructure. The maximun and minimum average temperature of Sutong Bridge is 30.1 and -0.2 respectively and the design value of effective temperature is 30.3. The compressive strain, , and the expansion, , of the bridge deck due to this effective temperature are found in Eqs. (12,13) with the coefficient of thermal expansion, 12 10;6 /. Eq. (14) gives the compressive stresses with the Youngs Modulus, E, for concrete and steel are 30kN/mm2 and 200kN/mm2 respectively. 364 (13) (12) 5.1 Bending The bridge deck is considered to be a continuous beam with a total length of 1088m and simple supports at each of the cable position. Assuming the cables are under post-tensioning which means the significant effect that induces the moment on the deck is the live load and the dead load induced moment is negligible. There are 272 cables in total for the whole bridge and 68 cables on each side of the main span. Assuming the distances between each cable is equivalent which is 1.57m approximately. Fig. 7 shows the maximum worst sagging and hogging case of the bridge deck. 361. [6] Figure 6: Temperature difference for bridge deck [1] 5 Strength Based on the loading analysis in Section 4, it is necessary to check the bending, torsion, buckling, deflection, creep of the bridge deck and the tension in the cables.

Worst Sagging Case

Live Load S.I.D Load Dead Load

275.615.74 384200106 210

185615.73 48200106 210

0.005mm

It is very clear that the deflection is not a problem of Sutong Bridge which compared with other effects. However, this result has not added in the extension of the

Worst Hogging Case

Live Load S.I.D Load Dead Load

cables. 5.4 Tension in Cables Sutong Bridge uses parallel galvanized wire unit cables with the tensile strength of 1770MPa. The largest cable is 577 meters long with a weight of 59 tons that consists of 313 wires with a diameter of 7mm.

Figure 7: Maximum sagging and hogging conditions The moment of maximum sagging condition shows in Eq. (16) and Eq. (17) gives the bending stress with a second-moment area, I, of 210 1012 mm4. M
2 10

(16) +
185615.7 4 6

275.615.72 10

14078 10
14078106 2000 2101012

(17) 0.134N/2

The yield strength of steel is 275MPa which is much bigger than the stress due to bending. 5.2 Torsion The worst case of torsion occurs when the live loadings just on one side carriageway of the bridge. The maximum torque is calculated as T 32576kNm per meter length. The maximum torsion moment for the whole bridge and the maximum shear stress are given in Eqs. (18, 19). max
1 2

Figure 8: Cables of Sutong Bridge The angles between the cables and the deck are different which gives different tensions in the cables. The biggest tension in the cable is the one has the smallest angle with the deck which is the longest cable and the angle is 23.5 degrees. The vertical load on the cable is due to the dead load, super-imposed dead load and live loads of the bridge deck and the maximum tension in the (32576 1088) (18) cable gives in Eq. (21). max sin (19) max
1006.615.7/2 sin 23.5

17721MNm max
max 2A 17721 24128

(21) 19.8MN

The diameter of the largest cable is 154mm and the tensile stress is 1063N/mm2 that is calculated in Eq. (22) which is less than the tensile strength of the cable (1770MPa).

17.3N/mm2 < 275N/mm2 5.3 Deflection The maximum deflection of deck shows in Eq. (20). max
54 384 3 48

19.8106

(22)

(20)

772

1063N/2 < 1770N/2

5.5 Bucking The compression force will cause buckling of the steel. The most compression force in the bridge deck is due to the horizontal component of the tension in the cables and the buckling happens between each cable supports. The maximum compression force of the deck is the region between two longest cables of mid-span gives in Eq. (23). 4 max cos 4 19.8 10 cos 23.5 72.6MN Eq. (24) is calculated the buckling load for the whole bridge.
2 I 2 6

test gives the experimental creep result is much less than the theoretical result. Based on several creep test results, a creep prediction formula of Sutong Bridge has been worked out that gives in Eq. (25). [8] (t,0) 1 [ 0.12 :( 0 )0.2
1

0 1 0.3 3 : 0 1

(25)

(23)

(24) 350GN > 72.6MN

2 200103 2101012 10880002

Figure 9: Short-term creep 6 Construction The project of Sutong Bridge started since 1991 and construct from June 2003 and expected to be completed in 2009. However, it was completed in March 2008 and formally opened in 30th June 2008. The construction of Sutong Bridge has generally 4 stages: foundation construction, tower construction, back-span diaphragm segment erection, main deck erection and completion. 6.1 Foundation & Geotechnics Sutong Bridge is located in the alluvial plain of Yangtze River Delta. The quaternary deposit distributed stable in this region with a thick thickness. The bedrock

5.6 Creep Creep is an inherent time variability of concrete. The back span of Sutong Bridge is used prestressed continues reinforced concrete beam with a total length of 140 + 268 + 140 548m . So the effect of creep cannot be ignored for Sutong Bridge. The factors that cause creep are the environmental temperature and relative humidity (RH), loading age, cement-water ratio of concrete, the Youngs Modulus of aggregate of concrete and so on. Sutong Bridge uses concrete class of C60 which with the high strength and performance. Table 2 shows the mixing proportion of C60 concrete. [8] Table 2: Mixing proportion of concrete
Cement Fly Ash Fine Aggregate Coarse Aggregate Water Chemical Admixtures

under the south side back-span is about 310m deep and about 270m deep under the north side.

384

96

706

1059

159

5.76

An experiment has been taken with different loading ages under natural environment to obtain the creep properties of C60 concrete of Sutong Bridge. The experiment has two parts: short-term creep test and long-term creep test. Fig. 9 shows the time history of short-term creep. It shows that the creep with 5 days and 7 days loading age increases rapidly which suggests the tension age of concrete should be postponed to reduce the prestress loss and early creep. The long-term creep Figure 10: Pile cap construction The foundation of Sutong Bridge uses high-rise pile

cap.

Every transitional

pier

consists

18

1.8m

about 15 months.

cast-in-situ bored piles. The bored piles are using C35 underwater concrete and the pile caps are using C40 concrete. The main pier consists 42 cast-in-situ bored piles with a varying diameter between 2.5m to 2.8m and uses C60 concrete for the pile cap. Fig. 10 shows the pile cap construction. 6.2 Tower The main tower of Sutong Bridge has a reverse Y shape with a height of 300.4m. The total volume of concrete of the tower is 27786m3 and the total weight of reinforcing steel is 7981tons. The upper tower is constructed by concrete and steel anchor box and the maximum weight of a single segment steel anchor box is 45.8tons. The average wind speed in this area is 35.4m/s. This two factors let the tower construction requires the tower cranes have a high wind resistance and large lifting capacity. Therefore, this construction uses two tower cranes: a Potain MD3600 big crane and a Jianglu QTZ315 normal crane which shows in Fig. 11. 6.4 Main-Span Deck The main deck of Sutong Bridge use suspended cantilever construction method. The deck erected from both ends of tower and lifted up by the twin gantries at the same time. When the tenth pair of cables has constructed, the bridge get to the maximum twin cantilevers state with a single lever length of 156.8m. Then add a temporary column at the side-span side. The side-span has been connected with the back-span after the eighteenth pair of cables has constructed. The maximum single cantilever has a lever length of 540.8m which occurs after the last pair of cables has constructed. Finally, the main span has been connected. 7 Natural Frequency To consider the effect of vibration due to the natural frequency is a very important part of a bridge design. The acceptable natural frequency is between 5Hz and 75Hz, otherwise it will cause collapse or let the users feel Figure 11: Large equipments layout of the tower 6.3 Back-Span Deck The back-span segment erection uses two 160m long launching girders with a total weight about 2000tons. Each girder has two winches with lifting height of 70m and lifting capacities of 150tons and 180tons. There is a barge crane to help with the launching girders which shows in Fig. 12. The diaphragm segments are lifted by the winches. When they get to the final positions, they will support by the clamping beams. Then the launching girders will move to next position. The total back-span erection period is uncomfortable. When the natural frequency is less than 5Hz, the maximum vertical acceleration (Eq. (26)) cannot be bigger than 0.50 / 2 . The formula to work out the natural frequency, f0, is given in Eq. (27). a 0 4 2 0 2 ( )2
4

Figure 12: Back-span diaphragm segment erection

(26) (27)

Two forms of natural frequency need to be considered of Sutong Bridge: one is with the length between two towers which is 1088m and the other is with the length between each cable which is 15.7m. The mass in this calculation will include the dead load and super-imposed dead load but exclude the live load which

is equal to 74592kg per meter length. The value of ( ) is 22.37 which is estimated in clamp-clamped mode. Therefore, the natural frequencies are found to be 0.448Hz for the main bridge span and 2154Hz for the span between the adjacent cables. However, this is just rough calculations and the actual number of the natural frequency for Sutong Bridge will between these two values. There are some other factors will affect the natural frequency and the accurate natural frequency value should be determined by the computer software. 8 Serviceability Sutong Bridge uses the Structural Health Monitoring and Safety Evaluation System to have the construction monitoring, loading test monitoring and the maintenance management after the operation. This system consists by four subsystems: Sensor System (SS), Data Acquisition and Transmission System (DATS), Data Processing and Control System (DPCS) and Structural Health Evaluation System (SHES). The Sensor System has overall 1440 sensors placed all over the bridge to detect the wind load, temperature, live load, earthquake load, tension in cables, axial stress, deflection,
2

with a high performance has been carried out such as reduce the water-cement ratio within the specific limit. To increase the durability of the pre-stressed steel bars can use vacuum grouting and plastic bellow. Aiming at the requirement for 50 years design life of the stayed cables of Sutong Bridge, there is a stretch bending fatigue test of the cables to verify if the cables can reach this requirement. Sutong Bridge is a highway bridge which normally does not allow pedestrians on the bridge. Once, Sutong Bridge has opened for pedestrians to visit and vandalism was of frequent occurrence during that time. 10 Conclusion Yangtze River Delta is the golden area of China. People used to cross Yangtze River by ferry before Sutong Bridge constructed and Sutong Bridge reduce the travel distance from Nantong to Shanghai by more than two hours driving time. It is not only a contribution in the structural and architectural fields, but also has the great economic significance to China. References [1] Xigang Zhang, Airong Chen, Sutong Bridge Design and Structural Performance, China Communications Press 2010 [2] Wusong Wen, The Technology of Continues Steel Structural Bridge, China Railway Press 2010 [3] BS 5400-2:2006 Steel, concrete and composite bridge-Part 2: Specification for loads, British

foundation settlement, structural corrosion and fatigue evaluation of Sutong Bridge. Fig. 13 shows the flow chart of this system. Figure 13: Framework of Structural Health Monitoring
Fixed Sensor System Portable Sensor System

Data Processing and Control System

Portable Data Processing and Control System

Bridge Site Surveillance Center

Standards [4] Bridge Aesthetics, Design guidelines to improve the appearance of bridges in NSW, pp. 6, 21, 46 [5] http://mceer.buffalo.edu/meetings/2005presentation s/Breakout2/07LeeDA.pdf [6] Minshan Pei, Study on longitudinal wind load calculation method of cables for cable-stayed

Data Processing and Control System

Structural Health Evaluation System

bridge, Highway, No.5, 2008 [7] Jiawu Miao, Global static analysis of the Sutong Bridge, Highway and Transportation Research and Development, Vol.23, No.5 [8] Yuntao Zhang, Experimental Research on Concrete Creep for main girder of Sutong Bridge, Highway and Transportation Research and Development, Vol.27, No.4

and Safety Evaluation System 9 Durability & Vandalism The design life for the main span of Sutong Bridge is 100 years and 60 years for the back span which require a high durability of the concrete. In order to satisfy this requirement, a mixing proportion design for the concrete