Reliability Evaluation of Vortex-Induced Vibration for a Long-Span Arch Bridge

Abstract

Bridge vortex-induced vibration (VIV) involves a number of uncertainties resulting from wind characteristics, structural properties, and bluff-body aerodynamics. Evaluation of VIV considering the variability in the parameter space has been of great concern. In this study, the influence of various parameters related to wind–bridge interactions on the VIV was evaluated based on different reliability calculation approaches. Specifically, the random nature in the parameter space, which was obtained based on the available data from both laboratories and meteorological stations, was propagated to assess its influence on the structural VIV utilizing the second-order second-moment (SOSM), second-order fourth-moment (SOFM), and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) methods. Three VIV performance functions involving different considerations of vibration-amplitude models and lock-in wind speeds were constructed. A long-span arch bridge was selected as an example to compute the failure probabilities of VIV considering parametric uncertainties and various performance functions.