Analytical assessment of suspension bridge's 3D curved cable configuration and cable clamp pre-installation angle considering the main cable torsional and flexural stiffnesses

For a suspension bridge with a spatial cable system, the 3D curved main cable undergoes large lateral and torsional deformations during construction, which increases the difficulty of construction control. If using the traditional ideal flexible cable assumption, the torsional deformation cannot be analyzed. Therefore, incorporating the main cable's torsional and flexural stiffnesses in shape-finding analysis remains highly challenging. This study develops an analytical method for determining the target configuration of the main cable by applying the multi-segment catenary method and the Cosserat rod model. The closed-form solution of the geometrically exact force-displacement-strain relationships is derived, comprehensively considering the tension, shear, bending, and torsion of the main cable, as well as the initial curvatures and axial strains in the reference configuration. Then a two-layer shape-finding framework is established, with the first layer being recursive calculations of the cable shape and the second layer being numerical calculations of the nonlinear governing equations using the Levenberg-Marquardt method. Furthermore, a novel method for calculating the pre-deflection angle of the cable clamp in the free cable state is presented for the first time. A classic cantilever model and a suspension bridge with the spatial main cable are studied to investigate the accuracy of the proposed algorithms. Numerical results indicate that when the spatial main cable is twisted, the bottom edge of the cable cross-section moves outward along the transverse direction of the bridge. The torsion of the main cable includes both elastic deformation and rigid body displacement caused by the bidirectional bending effect. At the mid-span, the torsional angle of the main cable cross-section is 10.088°, and the pre-deflection angle of the cable clamp at the mid-span should be set to 10.851° Moreover, the target configuration is highly sensitive to the flexural and torsional stiffnesses of the main cable while the effect of shear deformations on cable configurations can be ignored.