Simulation of cable-stayed bridge pretension forces by complete function collocation method with cell partition

Complete function collocation method (CFCM) without cell partition had been applied by Shum et al. to study cable-stayed bridge pretension forces. This paper is intended to extend this numerical method with cell partition for a more accurate prediction of transverse natural frequencies of stay cables under gravity body force and longitudinal deformation of bridge deck and bridge pylon subject to point loads. The objective of the proposed numerical method with cell partition is to divide the computational domain into subintervals called cells, where solution in each cell of the whole domain is then locally approximated by a truncated complete function, in contrast to the global approximation of a solution using one truncated complete function for the whole computational domain using CFCM without cell partition. Comparing to the previous results, CFCM with cell partition can predict natural frequencies of stay cables under gravity force, longitudinal bridge deck and bridge pylon deformations subject to point loads with significant improvement in accuracy over CFCM without cell partition. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.