Lateral sway buffeting of bridge decks due to yawed wind

The lateral sway buffeting of cable-stayed bridges at its erection stage in yawed wind was analytically studied. By simplifying the bridge deck as a cantilevered beam, a formulation was presented for the lateral response prediction in yawed wind. The effects of the wind yaw angle were incorporated by considering the change in the temporal wind direction caused by the lateral fluctuating wind velocity component and the dependence of the normal force distribution on the wind yaw angle. The agreement of the analytical results with the previous full bridge model experiments was generally good with respect to the effects of wind yaw angle, but for some cases the analysis underestimated the response with large wind yaw angle. The assumption on the normal force distribution shape and the aerodynamic damping with different wind yaw angle were found to affect considerably the predicted response characteristics, and more information seems to be necessary.