Buffeting Response and Equivalent Wind Load of Single Cantilever Corridor Bridge in Mountainous Areas

In order to study the buffeting response and the wind loading of a cantilevered pedestrian bridge in windy mountainous, a corridor bridge model was put in a wind tunnel to obtain its aerostatic force coefficients and buffeting responses. The maximum equivalent wind load in the transverse direction was calculated according to the bridges structural code and compared to the experimental results. The complex mountainous terrain has a significant influence on the structural aerostatic force coefficients and the buffeting responses, although neither of their maximums arises due to the general wind yaw. The structural buffeting responses increase with higher wind speeds, while are affected little by the wind attack angles in a small range. The lateral buffeting response is neither sensitive to turbulence intensity nor the turbulence integral scale. The vertical and torsional responses show an uptrend with increasing turbulence intensity, and both increase by around 15% when the turbulence intensity increases by around 40%. The vertical responses increase by about 9% if the turbulence integral scale increases by about 20%, while the lateral responses are affected little by a change in integral scale. In spite of the small influence of the turbulence integral scales on the lateral responses, the torsional responses vary greatly at different wind attack angles. At an attack angle of 3°, the torsional responses increase by around 8% with the increased integral scale, but they are influenced little by the change in integral scale at a 0° attack angle. Compared with the lateral wind loading found in the wind tunnel, the maximum equivalent calculated from the bridges structural code seems too conservative, and hence the code’s static gust factor should be further investigated.