Strong wind characteristics and dynamic response of a long-span suspension bridge during a storm

As Storm Tor struck the western coast of Norway, wind speeds and bridge deck accelerations along the Hardanger Bridge girder were recorded by the monitoring system installed on the bridge. Using 13.5 h of data, mean wind speed, turbulence intensities, gust factor, turbulence length scales, angle-of-attack, and one-point and two-point turbulence spectra are studied using 10-minute stationary averaging intervals. Using the measured turbulence statistics as inputs, the buffeting response of the bridge deck is calculated in the frequency domain. The calculated response is compared with the measured response in terms of the root-mean-square (RMS) of acceleration and displacement components and the power spectral density of the acceleration response. Significant discrepancies are found in the case of the vertical response. Predicting the spectral response is found to be more difficult than predicting the RMS response, in particular for high-frequency responses. Considering the spanwise non-uniformity of turbulence statistics did not affect the predictions significantly.