Monitoring-based evaluation of dynamic characteristics of a long span suspension bridge under typhoons

The Xihoumen Bridge, with a main span of 1650 m and two side spans of 578 m and 485 m, respectively, is a long-span suspension bridge spanning the Jintang and Cezi islands in Zhejiang Province, China. In order to establish a reference baseline for vibration mitigation and condition assessment of the bridge under typhoons, the wind field properties, vibration energy distribution, and modal parameters of the bridge are identified through in-situ monitoring. Dynamic responses at different locations on main span and wind speeds at 1/2 main span of the bridge under 10 typhoons and under normal wind were collected for this study. Vibration energy distribution is estimated using wavelet packet transform. Modal parameters are identified by the peak-picking (PP) and data-driven stochastic subspace identification (SSI-DATA) methods. The results indicate that in the low-frequency range, the fluctuating wind energy of typhoons changes more significantly than that of normal wind. More than 80% of the vibration energy is concentrated in the frequency band (0–1.5625 Hz) under typhoons, while nearly 90% of the vibration energy under normal winds is evenly distributed in three frequency bands (0–1.5625 Hz, 1.5625–3.125 Hz, and 3.125–4.6875 Hz). When using typhoon-induced dynamic responses as input, the SSI-DATA method performs better than the PP method in the identification of modal parameters. The results obtained in this study can be used as a baseline for future structural condition assessment of the bridge after typhoon events.