Aeroelastic stability analysis of a bridge deck with added vanes using a discrete vortex method

A two dimensional discrete vortex method (DIVEX) has been developed at the Departmentrnof Aerospace Engineering, University of Glasgow, to predict unsteady and incompressible flow fieldsrnaround closed bodies. The basis of the method is the discretisation of the vorticity field, rather than thernvelocity field, into a series of vortex particles that are free to move in the flow field that the particlesrncollectively induce. This paper gives a brief description of the numerical implementation of DIVEX andrnpresents the results of calculations on a recent suspension bridge deck section. The results from both thernstatic and flutter analysis of the main deck in isolation are in good agreement with experimental data. Arnbrief study of the effect of flow control vanes on the aeroelastic stability of the bridge is also presentedrnand the results confirm previous analytical and experimental studies. The aeroelastic study is carried outrnfirstly using aerodynamic derivatives extracted from the DIVEX simulations. These results are thenrnassessed further by presenting results from full time-dependent aeroelastic solutions for the original deckrnand one of the vane cases. In general, the results show good qualitative and quantitative agreement with resultsrnfrom experimental data and demonstrate that DIVEX is a useful design tool in the field of wind engineering.