Parametric Study of Stay Cables of a Bridge Under Simulated Spatially Correlated Turbulent Wind

Abstract The main objective of this work is to carry out a parametric study of stay cables of a bridge under simulated spatially correlated buffeting forces. This vibration mechanism is simulated with an Autoregressive and Moving Average (ARMA) model, and applied to mathematical models of the stay cables of the tallest cable-stayed bridge in Mexico. The use of auxiliary damping devices to mitigate vibration is evaluated. The analysis results showed that the use of a more realistic model to represent and characterize the variation in space and time of the fluctuating wind, which is not capture by the white noise or harmonic functions, is advantageous and offers a new alternative to evaluate the structural response of stay cables without and with dampers. The implications of the analyses results in the structural behavior of the stay cables of the bridge are discussed.