NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF TURBULENT FLUCTUATIONS ALONG THE AXIS OF A BRIDGE

There are many potential applications where it would be useful to digi tally generate the turbulent wind velocity time histories in the wind engineering study. One of the widely used numerical techniques for win d field simulation is the spectral representation method. However, the main drawback of this method is being computationally expensive for t he multivariate and multidimensional processes problems. In this paper , a modified spectral representation method is proposed specifically f or generation of the turbulent fluctuations along a bridge deck at the same elevation. The proposed method does not require decomposition of the spectral density matrix, thus it is more efficient than the origi nal spectral representation method. As an example, the method is appli ed to the simulation of the wind field for a long-span suspension brid ge. A comparison of the simulated covariance functions with their targ et functions is also included. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All righ ts reserved.