Les outils de la conception dynamique des ponts

The tools for bridge aerodynamical design

Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées

Abstract

The wind capacity to damage and further more to destroy civil engineering structures, has been known since the ancient times. During this century, the well documented destruction of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 was a central event for clearing and defining the needs in methods and techniques to design and dimension bridges able to resist to wind. This paper reviews the experimental and numerical tools which are available for forecasting wind effects. It also introduces the new features provided by computational fluid dynamics.