Effects of hanger extensibility on responses of suspension bridges

Abstract

This paper presents an improved deflection theory considering extensible hangers for the static analysis of a suspension bridge. The coupled differential equations for the deflections of the main cable and girder are presented and numerically solved by MATLAB. For verification, the two- dimensional finite-element method, the conventional deflection theory, and the improved deflection theory are used to obtain the static responses of an example model of a three-span suspension bridge. The results show that the improved theory can demonstrate accurate static behaviors of suspension bridges.