Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813

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Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Cable force optimization of a curved cable-stayed bridge with combined T

simulated annealing method and cubic B-Spline interpolation curves
Junjun Guoa,b, Wancheng Yuana, Xinzhi Danga, , M. Shahria Alamb,
⁎ ⁎

a
State Key Laboratory of Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji University, 1239, Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, PR China
b
School of Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Cable-stayed bridges have been extensively constructed in China in the recent two decades. This type of bridge is
Cable-stayed bridge characterized by flexible cables that transfer the deck loads to pylons. This study focuses on the cable force
Optimum cable forces optimization of a curved cable-stayed bridge based on the proposed method where simulated annealing and
Simulated annealing cubic B-Spline interpolation curves are combined for the optimization. Firstly, the numerical model of a curved
Cubic B-Spline interpolation curves
cable-stayed bridge is generated in OpenSees platform. Secondly, the proposed method is elaborately described,
OpenSees
including the establishment of cubic B-Spline interpolation curves based on four interpolation points, the flow
chart of simulated annealing algorithm, objective function, design variables, and design load cases. Finally, the
static responses of the bridge deck, pylons, and cables are calculated and discussed under the obtained optimum
cable forces. The results reveal that the currently proposed method can efficiently generate a number of values
for the objective function, and the optimum solution can be selected as the minimum of the generated objective
function values. In addition, cable forces obtained by the proposed method change gradually. The proposed
method for determining the optimum cable forces can be easily implemented in practice.

1. Introduction
Cable-stayed bridges have been extensively constructed in China
during the past twenty years. Such bridges are favored by bridge de-
signers because of the efficient use of materials, aesthetics, and the
economy. Thus, cable-stayed bridges have become a competitive bridge
type for long-span bridges, especially for spans between 500 m and
1000 m. The cable-stayed bridge is mainly comprised of three compo-
nents: bridge deck that provides vehicle lanes, stay-cables that transfer
loads from deck to pylons, and bridge pylons that transfer cable forces
to the foundation and resist unbalanced bending moments. Stay-cables
play an important role in the design procedure and erection stages of a
cable-stayed bridge. On one hand, the force distribution of bridge deck
and pylons can be adjusted by differing tension forces in stay-cables, on
the other hand, stay-cables make this type bridge a highly redundant
structure. The deck and pylons of a cable-stayed bridge should be de-
signed such that their vertical and horizontal displacements, respec-
tively are minimized during service loads. This purpose can be achieved
by the optimization of pre-tensioning cable forces. This topic has been
investigated extensively, and the details are presented in the following
paragraphs.
Wang and Tseng [1] presented the zero displacement method that
takes the zero displacement deck profile at cable anchorage points as a
target where the optimum cable forces are obtained through the
iterative process. Zhang and Au [2] further improved this method be-
cause of its earlier intensive computation and convergence difficulty. In
the case of improved zero displacement method, the uniform design is
used and the displacement at control points are obtained based on finite
element analysis. Then, the Kriging model [3] was adopted to establish
the relationship between the geometry of the bridge deck and the pre-
tensioning cable forces. Finally, optimal cable forces were obtained
through optimization analysis on the established Kriging model. This
improved method converges easily and saves time. Nevertheless, the
cable forces usually change abruptly for the aforementioned zero dis-
placement method.
Chen and Au [4] proposed the force equilibrium method that can
easily take the vertical profile of the bridge deck and cable forces into
consideration. In this method, firstly, the target bending moment of the
bridge deck is established by the deck model that is rigidly supported at
each cable anchorage point. Then, cable forces are applied to each
anchorage point, and iteration is conducted for cable forces to obtain
the target bending moments of the bridge deck. However, this method
is more complicated and the nonlinearity effects are not considered.
Janjic and Pircher [5] demonstrated the basic principle of unit load

⁎
Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: leodangxz@163.com (X. Dang), shahria.alam@ubc.ca (M.S. Alam).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2019.109813
Received 18 March 2019; Received in revised form 5 September 2019; Accepted 15 October 2019
Available online 22 October 2019
0141-0296/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Guo, et al.
method. Each cable force is regarded as an independent variable, and
the unit load is applied to one of them to obtain the bending moment at
each anchor point of the bridge deck. By repeating this process, the
relationship between the cable forces and optimal bending moments
can be established. Finally, the optimum cable forces can be obtained
by solving the linear equations. The advantage of this method is that the
construction sequence, large displacements, time-dependency, and
cable sag effects can be taken into account. Lee and Kim [6] proposed a
“two-step approach” based on the unit load method. The upper and
lower bounds of cable forces are introduced in the second step and then
the global minimum is obtained. However, unit load method is only
suitable for linear systems, and it is unreasonable for a large span cable-
stayed bridge characterized by geometric nonlinearity.
In recent years, a number of optimization algorithms that determine
the optimal cable forces of cable-stayed bridges have been proposed.
Baldomir and Hernandez [7] conducted an optimum process that can
account for cable stress and deck displacement, and the optimized cable
forces can be obtained after a certain number of iterations. Hassan [8,9]
proposed a new method that combines Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and B-
spline curves to determine the optimum post-tensioning cable forces for
cable-stayed bridges under dead load. This new method can minimize
the vertical displacement of the deck and the horizontal deflection of
the pylon’s tops. Martins and Simões [10–12] computed the cable forces
based on an entropy-based approach that can account for the con-
struction sequence and the time-dependent effects of cable-stayed
bridges. Fabbrocino and Modano [13] proposed a procedure that can
determine the optimum cable forces of composite cable-stayed bridges,
and this method pertains to “force equilibrium methods”. Ha and Vu
[14] developed a generalized method to obtain the optimum cable
forces based on nonlinear inelastic analysis and a micro-genetic algo-
rithm. The advantage of this method is that both the initial cable ten-
sioning forces and the total weight of cables can be optimized. Song and
Xiao [15] presented an optimization procedure for determining initial
cable forces of long-span cable-stayed bridges considering the coun-
terweight.
Although many works for determining the tensioning forces of
cable-stayed bridges have been done based on the above-mentioned
studies, most of them are more complicated for bridge designers.
Meanwhile, cable-stayed bridges are high statically indeterminate, the
solution to cable tensioning forces for this type of bridge is not unique
[17]. Thus, it is essential to develop a new procedure that can easily
determine the optimum cable forces. In the current study, a method
combing simulated annealing algorithm and cubic B-Spline interpola-
tion curves is proposed. Compared to the aforementioned methods, the
proposed new algorithm can achieve a balance between the accuracy
and computational cost, i.e. the reasonable cable forces can be obtained
after a certain number of iterations. This method can be used to facil-
itate the preliminary design of cable-stayed bridges. More importantly,
the obtained cable forces will not change abruptly but smoothly. The
numerical model of a curved cable-stayed bridge is established by
OpenSees software, and an optimization algorithm is programmed in
Python language. The static responses of the bridge deck, the pylons,
and the cables are calculated and discussed under the obtained op-
timum cable forces.
2. Description and numerical model of the bridge
2.1. Description of the bridge
The illustrative example bridge has been chosen in the current study
based on a three-span curved cable-stayed bridge under construction.
The length of the main span is 364 m, and the length of the left and
right side spans are 96 m and 138.8 m, respectively, as shown in Fig. 1
2
Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813
(a). The piers of the bridge are consecutively numbered for convenience
(Fig. 1(a)). Auxiliary piers (2, 5 and 6) are provided to increase the
stiffness of the considered bridge, and counterweights are applied to
both side spans to balance the self-weight of the main span. The cables
are arranged in two inclined planes, and semi-harp cable pattern is
adopted because of its efficiency[16]. The tensile strength of the cables
is 1770 MPa. The cable numbering is presented in Fig. 1(b), and the left
pylon of the bridge is situated on a curve that has the curvature radius
of 600 m. The pylons of the bridge are asymmetrical, and the height of
the shorter pylon and higher pylon are 102 m and 118.5 m, respec-
tively, as can be seen in Fig. 1(a) and (c). The bridge has four lanes of
traffic having a streamlined steel box girder, and the yield strength of
the steel box girder is 345 MPa. The pylons, transition piers and aux-
iliary piers are made of concrete. The tensile and compressive strengths
of the concrete are 2.65 MPa and 32.4 MPa, respectively. The cross-
sections of the pylons and auxiliary piers are presented in Fig. 1(d), and
the cross-sectional properties of the girder and the pylon bottom are
summarized in Table 1.
2.2. Numerical model of the bridge
The three dimensional (3D) numerical model of the curved cable-
stayed bridge is generated in OpenSees platform[18], as shown in
Fig. 2. The bridge deck is simulated with linear-elastic beam-column
elements passing through its shear center, and the stiffness properties
and mass of the deck section are concentrated in the spine beams. It is
expected that the transition piers, auxiliary piers, and pylons will ex-
perience plastic deformation when subjected to extreme loads, such as
strong earthquakes. Thus, they are modelled with fiber sections that are
comprised of confined concrete, unconfined concrete, and reinforce-
ment bar. The yield stress, modulus of elasticity and hardening ratio of
the rebar are 400 MPa, 2 × 105 MPa and 0.05, respectively. The rebar is
simulated with Steel01 Material in OpenSees. The confined and un-
confined concrete behaviors are modelled with the nonlinear con-
stitutive relationship proposed by Mander [19]. The maximum com-
pressive strength, strain at maximum strength, crushing strength and
strain at crushing strength of the confined and unconfined concrete are
36.5 MPa and 32.4 MPa, 2.2 × 10 3 and 2.0 × 10 3 , 7.3 MPa and
6.5 MPa, and 1.6 × 10 2 and 3.5 × 10 3 , respectively. The advantage of
the fiber section is that the P-delta effect can be accounted in the static
analysis. The inclined stay cables are assumed to remain elastic during
its whole service life, and these flexible stay cables can only resist
tensile force. Thus, stay cables are modelled with large-displacement
truss elements with pre-defined tension-only uniaxial material. The
sagging effect of stay cables due to its self-weight is considered by the
equivalent modulus of elasticity or Ernst modulus [20]. The large dis-
placement truss element in OpenSees is adopted to model the stay
cables. First, the allowable stress of the cable is taken as one-third of its
design strength (1770 ÷ 3= 590 MPa ), and the areas of each cable can be
calculated. Second, Ernst method is used to obtain the equivalent
modulus of elasticity. Then, the cable forces are applied to the bridge by
truss elements that include tension only materials with initial strain.
The two ends of stay cables are rigidly connected with the corre-
sponding deck nodes and pylon nodes, respectively. The transition
piers, auxiliary piers, and pylons are connected with bridge deck by
bearings. These bearings are restrained in the transverse direction and
can move freely in the longitudinal direction. In the vertical direction,
the bearings are assumed to resist only compressive force, thus elastic
no-tension material is adopted to simulate the force-displacement re-
lationship of the bearings. Lumped linear springs including three
translational springs and three rotational springs are used to model the
pier foundations.
J. Guo, et al. Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813

Fig. 1. Description of the bridge: (a) elevation view; (b) plan view; (c) side view; (d) cross-sections of pylons and auxiliary piers.

Table 1 cable-stayed bridge has asymmetrical pylons and side spans, thus the
Cross-sectional properties. cable forces in each side have to be taken as design variables for pre-
Cross-section
vious optimization techniques. Thus, a total of 56 design variables
A (m2) Iz (m4) Iy (m4) J (m4)
should be considered in the example bridge. The main disadvantage of
Girder 1.779 246.207 2.620 3.800 a large number of design variables is that it is difficult to obtain the
Pylon bottom 104.238 20,553 641 1680 optimum solution, meanwhile, the cable forces in some intervals may
change sharply. In order to avoid these disadvantages, Cubic B-Spline
Note: A = cross section area; Iz = moment of inertia to the global z-axis;
interpolation curve is adopted to represent the cable force distribution
Iy = moment of inertia to the global y-axis; J = torsion resistance.
in the current research, as shown in Fig. 3. The cubic B-Spline curve can
be defined as below[21]:
3. Formulation of the optimization problem 3
Pk,3 (t ) = Pi + k Gi,3 (t ), t [0, 1]
3.1. Cubic B-Spline interpolation curve i=0 (1)

In most previous optimization procedure, the design variables are where Pi (i = 0, 1, ...,5) are the control points, Gi,3 (t ) are the third-order
equal to the number of stay cables. For example, the current curved B-Spline basis functions given as:

3
J. Guo, et al. Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813

Fig. 2. Numerical model of the bridge.

conditions of cubic B-Spline curve given as:

1
P0,3 (0) = 6 (P0 + 4P1 + P2) = f (x 0)
1
P0,3 (1) = 6 (P1 + 4P2 + P3) = f (x1)
1
P1,3 (1) = 6 (P2 + 4P3 + P4 ) = f (x2 )
1
P2,3 (1) = 6 (P3 + 4P4 + P5) = f (x3) (3)

P0,3 (0) = P2 2P1 + P0 = 0

P3,3 (1) = P5 2P4 + P3 = 0 (4)

Eq. (3) reflects the values at the ends of the first curve segment,
which are equal to the corresponding interpolation point values. Eq. (4)
Fig. 3. Cubic B-Spline interpolation curve.
presents the second derivative of the first curve segment at the end-
points. In the same way, the boundary conditions for the other two
1
G0,3 (t ) = 6 ( t 3 + 3t 2 3t + 1) curve segments can be established. It should be noted that some of the
1 aforementioned equations are correlated due to the continuity condi-
G1,3 (t ) = (3t 3 6t 2 + 4) t [0, 1]
6 tions of internal interpolation points. Finally, a total of 6 independent
G2,3 (t ) =
1
6
( 3t 3 + 3t 2 + 3t + 1) equations are established, and the 6 control points can be determined
1 3 by solving the independent equations under given interpolation points.
G3,3 (t ) = t (2)
6 In the current study, cubic B-Spline interpolation curves are obtained by
using the functions (interpolate.splrep () and interpolate.splev ()) in
The relationship between the control points and the interpolation Python programming [22]. The advantage of cubic-B spline interpola-
points (design variables) can be established based on boundary tion curve is that it can accommodate various shapes with only four

Fig. 4. Cable forces represented by cubic B-Spline interpolation curves.

4
J. Guo, et al. Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813

Start

Randomly generate initial solution x, and

calculate objective function f(x_old)

Random walk to generate new

solution x_new, and calculate new
objective function f(x_new)

dE=f(x_new)-f(x_old)

Calculate probability
dE<0? No
p=exp(-dE/T)

No Yes

Accept new solution x=x_new

Yes
P>Random(0,1)?

Reach total number

No
of random walk ?

Yes

Decrease iterative Reach minimum

No
value T=maxT*α^k iterative value Tmin ?

Yes

End

Fig. 5. Flow chart of the simulated annealing method.

parameters, in addition, this curve changes smoothly. However, for 2. Calculate the old objective function value ( f (x old ) ) based on the
polynomial, the lower degree polynomial cannot provide adequate generated initial solution x . Randomly walk based on below for-
shapes, and the high degree polynomial usually makes curves change mulation:
abruptly. The authors tried to adopt polynomial and exponential
x new =x - old + T × sigFun (u 0.5) × ((1 + 1/ T )|2 × u 1| 1) × x
functions, but the results are not as good as those based on the cubic B-
Spline interpolation curve. (5)
In the current study, four cubic B-Spline interpolation curves are T = Tmax × k
(6)
used to represent the cable force distributions due to the asymmetry of
the example bridge, as shown in Fig. 4. For each interpolation curve, 1 if x > 0
the interpolation points are equally spaced along its horizontal axis. The sigFun (x ) = 0 if x = 0
first and fourth interpolation points are located at the first and last 1 if x < 0 (7)
anchor points, respectively. As a result, the vertical coordinate values of
interpolation points are taken as design variables. where T is the current iterative value level, and can be obtained
based on expression (6); x is the change of variable value; is a
3.2. Simulated annealing method constant usually varying from 0.8 to 1; k is the iteration number;
sigFun (x ) is signal function, as defined in formula (7); u is a random
Simulated annealing (SA) method is a probabilistic technique for value generated based on uniform distribution between 0 and 1
approximating the global optimization in a large search space for an (u = random . uniform (0, 1) ). In the current study, the tensile
optimization problem [23–25]. Implementation of the simulated an- strength of the cable is 1770 MPa, and the allowable stress of the
nealing is presented in Fig. 5, and can be summarized as below: cable under dead load case is taken as the one-third of its tensile
strength. As a result, the cross-sectional area of each cable can be
1. Determine the solution space, maximum iterative value Tmax , calculated using equation (8):
minimum iterative value Tmin , and the total number of random walk
for each iterative level.

5
J. Guo, et al.
F Fobj =
A=
[ ] (8)
where A is the cross-sectional area, F is the cable force, and
[ ] = 1770 ÷ 3= 590 MPa is the allowable stress.
3. Calculate the new objective function value ( f (x new ) ) based on the
generated new solution x new . Then compare f (x new ) with f (x old ) :
dE = f (x new ) f (x old ) (9)
if dE < 0 , replace the current old solution x old with the current new
solution x new . Otherwise, accept x new based on formulas (10):
exp( dE / T ) > random . uniform (0, 1) (10)
where exp(x ) is an exponential function; random . uniform (0, 1)
generates a random value between 0 and 1.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until reaching the total number of random
walks in the current iterative value level (T ), and record the op-
timum solution at this iterative value level. Then, update iteration
number k, and decrease the iterative value based on formula (6).
5. Repeat step 4 until reaching the termination condition (Tmin ).
SA method can avoid the local optimal solution. However, for some
complicated problems, it is difficult to obtain the global optimal solu-
tion. For such situations, it is preferred to obtain a reasonable solution
from a set of generated solutions. On one hand, finding a global optimal
solution is time-consuming, and for some problems, it is difficult to
obtain the global optimum. On the other hand, some accepted solutions
can be generated after a certain number of iterations. In the current
study, the number of iterations depends on the maximum value (Tmax ),
minimum value (Tmin ), the magnitude of variable change ( x ) in Eq. (5),
and in Eq. (6). After running many simulations with many trials and
errors, the authors’ gained valuable experiences, and found that x can
be set to 1000 kN, the Tmax and Tmin can be varied from 10 to 50 and
1.0 × 10 - 4 to 1.0 × 10 - 5 , respectively. Where, can range from 0.85 to
0.95. Then, Eq. (6) can be used to calculate the number of iterations. It
should be noted that the suggested iterative parameter values may not
be suitable for other cable-stayed bridges, and some numerical trials
can be conducted to select the appropriate values. In general, there
should be a large range at the earlier iteration, and a small range at the
end of iteration. For example, taking x as 1000 kN, Tmax and Tmin as 10
and 1.0 × 10 - 4 , respectively, and as 0.9. Based on equation (5), the
maximum and minimum changes of the control points are 10,000 kN
and 0.1 kN, respectively. The total number of iterations is 110 ac-
cording to Eq. (6).
In the following optimization, optimal solutions at each iterative
value level will be recorded, and the final solution can be selected from
the iterations.
3.3. Design variables and objective function
In the current study, the y-coordinates of the cubic B-Spline inter-
polation points are taken as design variables ( f (x i ) in Fig. 3) that de-
termine the shape of the cubic B-Spline interpolation curve. Stay cable
forces can be obtained based on the determined curve. A total of 16
design variables defining 4 cubic B-Spline interpolation curves are
considered in the current optimization problem. The x-coordinates of
the interpolation points are uniformly spaced and do not change during
the optimization process.
The objective function (Fobj ) to be considered in the current study is
the square root of the sum of the squares (SRSS) of the vertical dis-
placement of the nodal points of the bridge deck and the squares of the
horizontal displacements of the nodal points of the pylons. The use of
the SRSS smoothes out the objective function and does not induce false
local optima [8]. The objective function is presented in Eq. (11):
6
Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813
(d12 + d 22 + ) + (p12 + p22 + )
(11)
where di is the vertical displacement of the bridge deck node; pi is the
horizontal displacement of the pylon node.
The purpose of taking all the bridge deck and pylon nodes into
account in establishing the objective function is to achieve small ver-
tical displacements of the bridge deck and horizontal displacements of
the pylons in the process of cable force optimization.
3.4. Optimization implementation
The optimization procedure of the example cable-stayed bridge can
be implemented based on the above-mentioned algorithm. In the cur-
rent study, the maximum and minimum iterative values are set to 20
and 5.0 × 10 5, respectively. is set to 0.95, which can guarantee the
iterative value decreases gradually. The total number of random walks
in each iterative value is set to 2. In the current study, the lower and
upper bounds of the cable forces are set to 1000 kN and 5500 kN, re-
spectively. In case, the lower and upper bound values are different, and
those bound values can be set in the program. These bound constraints
are set to narrow the search space, thus, a number of values of the
objective function can be obtained quickly. In practice, the cable forces
near the ends and middle of the girder are larger than those in the other
positions, which can increase the global stiffness of the cable-stayed
bridge. Thus, the values of design variables are designed to satisfy the
following constraint:
1000 kN < f (x 0 ) < f (x1 ) < f (x2 ) < f (x3 ) < 5500 kN (12)
The change of variable value ( x ) is set to 1000 kN, and a total of
two random walks are conducted for each iteration level. In the current
study, cable force optimization is conducted under dead load, and dif-
ferent variable initial values are considered to evaluate their effects on
the responses of the bridge, as shown in Fig. 6. Fig. 6(a) depicts the
objective function values of two different initial values. It is found that
a number of the values of the objective function can be obtained, and
approximately equal optimum values generate for two different initial
conditions. This is verified by the maximum vertical displacement of
the bridge deck and the maximum horizontal displacement of the py-
lons, as shown in Fig. 6(b) and (c). In the following case study, the
variable initial value (2000, 3000, 4000, 5000) kN is taken, and the
cable forces based on the minimum value of the objective function are
taken in the following study.
In the current study, the short side spans are supported by auxiliary
piers, thus the stiffness of the side spans is larger than that of the middle
span. As a result, compared to the whole deck length, applying live load
in the middle span is more critical to the whole bridge system, and will
generate more conservative estimate for the cable forces. Three live
load cases are considered, as can be seen in Fig. 7. According to Chinese
bridge design specification[26], the live load for each traffic lane is
composed of distributed load (DLL) and concentrated load (CLL), and
10.5 kN/m and 360 kN kN are taken for distributed and concentrated
loads, respectively. A total of 4 lanes are designed in the current cable-
stayed bridge. For live load case 1, the distributed and concentrated live
loads are applied to the main span and to the interaction position of the
two cable planes, respectively. The other two live load cases can be seen
in Fig. 7.
4. Results and discussion
According to the optimization in Section 3, the cable responses
under four load cases are illustrated in Fig. 8. The cable forces for each
cable plane change smoothly from the first stay cable to the last. The
cable forces increased for live load cases compared to those for the dead
load, and it can be seen that the cables near the end of the cable plane
are more easily affected by the live loads. It is found that the cable
forces for four load cases (dead load and three live load cases) are
J. Guo, et al. Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813

Fig. 6. Results of optimization under variable initial value (2000, 3000, 4000, 5000) kN and (1000, 2500, 4000, 5500) kN: (a) objective function; (b) maximum
vertical displacement of the bridge deck; (c) maximum horizontal displacement of the pylons.

within the upper and lower bounds as predefined.
Fig. 9 presents the vertical displacement, axial force and bending
moment along the bridge deck under the dead load and other three live
load cases. The maximum vertical displacements of the bridge deck
under dead load and live load case 1 are 0.02 m and 0.27 m, respec-
tively. These vertical displacements are within the allowable displace-
ment (Lmain/400 = 364/400 = 0.91 m, and Lmain is the length of the
main span) as per the Chinese cable-stayed bridge design specification
[27]. In the current research, the optimization is conducted under dead
load, and optimization can also be implemented with the consideration
of dead load and live load. The vertical displacements in the side spans
are very small compared to those in the main span because of the
auxiliary piers. Fig. 9(b) presents the axial forces of the bridge deck, it is
found that the maximum axial force is located at the intersection

Fig. 7. Live load cases: concentrated live load (CLL) and distributed live load (DLL).

7
J. Guo, et al.
Fig. 8. Cable forces under different design loads.
between the deck and the taller pylon. The maximum bending moments
of the bridge deck in the main and side spans are 6870 kN·m and
52,087 kN·m, respectively when subjected to the dead load. Large
bending moments of the bridge deck exist in side-span due to the
counterweights. Counterweights at the side spans can increase the
global stiffness of the bridge, meanwhile, large bending moments exist
in side-spans. However, the stresses induced by these large bending
moments and the corresponding axial forces are far less than the yield
strength of the girder. More detailed information is provided in the
following section. The maximum bending moments of the bridge deck
under live load case 1 is 49,870 kN·m, and this means that the cable
forces obtained based on the proposed method are reasonable with
respect to the responses of the bridge deck under dead and live load
cases.
Fig. 10 depicts the static responses of the shorter pylon under dead
and live load cases. The maximum horizontal displacement of the top of
the short pylon under dead load and live load case 1 are 0.02 m and
0.069 m, respectively, as can be seen in Fig. 10(a). The bending moment
distribution along the pylon height is described in Fig. 10(c), and the
maximum bending moment is located at the bottom of the pylon.
In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed cable force
optimization method, the stresses along the steel girder length and
pylon height are calculated, as can be seen in Fig. 11. In the current
study, the shear stresses are not considered because they are usually
8
Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813
much smaller than the corresponding normal stresses. Fig. 11(a) pre-
sents the maximum and minimum normal stresses of the steel box
girder under different loading conditions (dead load case, live load 1
case, live load 2 case and live load 3 case). The normal stress is cal-
culated based on the axial force and bending moment at each cross-
section. It is found that the maximum normal stress is 63.4 MPa oc-
curring in live load 3 (Live3-Max), which is about 22.6% of the al-
lowable maximum compressive stress (280 MPa). In addition, the
minimum normal stress is −26.8 MPa which is about 9.6% of the al-
lowable maximum tensile stress (−280 MPa). The maximum and
minimum normal stresses of the steel girder under the four load con-
ditions are far less than their corresponding allowable values. Fig. 11(b)
demonstrates the maximum and minimum normal stresses along the
height of the short pylon. The allowable maximum compressive and
tensile stress of the concrete is 22.4 MPa and −1.8 MPa, respectively. It
is found that all the sections experience stresses where the maximum
compressive stress is 8.2 MPa that is 36.6% of the allowable compres-
sive stress. It should be noted that the allowable maximum stresses for
the concrete and steel refer to their corresponding design strength va-
lues according to Chinese reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges
design specification [28], for example, the compressive strength stan-
dard value of concrete C50 is 32.4 MPa, and its design strength value
(allowable maximum value) is 22.4 MPa.
The current study shows that optimum cable forces can be obtained
J. Guo, et al.
Fig. 9. Responses of the bridge deck under different load cases: (a) vertical displacement; (b) axial force; (c) bending moment.
based on the proposed method. The objective function usually cannot
directly converge to the global minimum. However, a set of rational
results can be obtained, such as displacements of the bridge deck, py-
lons, and cable forces. Hence, the new algorithm is efficient in de-
termining the initial cable forces of cable-stayed bridges. Another im-
portant aspect is that, the cable force distribution of each cable plane
can be specified, for example, in the current study, the values for each
cable plane are assumed to increase from the start till the end.
For convenience, the cable-stayed bridge design is divided into two
stages: completion stage and construction stage. For completion stage,
there is no need to consider the construction stage. At the notional
completion state, the cable forces are optimized, which are later used in
the construction stage. The optimized final state is considered as target
cable forces, and forward iteration method can be adapted to determine
the cable forces at each construction step. The main purpose of this
manuscript is to determine the optimal final stage of the cable-stayed
bridge, which can be used as target values in the construction process.
After determining the optimal cable forces at the completion stage,
the forward iteration method [4] can be adopted to generate the ten-
sioning cable forces at their corresponding construction steps. In the
forward iteration method first a set of tensioning cable forces ({T0} ) are
assumed to generate a completion state based on the forward method.
Secondly, by comparing the generated and optimized completion stages
(cable forces, girder vertical displacements et.al.), the cable forces are
adjusted based on the following expression:
[A]{x } = {F0 F} (13)
where [A] is the influence matrix, {x } is the cable force increment
vector, F0 , F are the critical responses at the optimized completion
stage and the generated completion stage, respectively. The least square
9
Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813
method can be used to solve equation (13), then the tensioning cable
forces can be updated as below:
{T } = {T0} + {x } (14)
Repeating step one and two, until the errors between the target and
iterated critical responses satisfy the predefined threshold. The ad-
vantage of the forward iteration method is that shrinkage and creep
effects of concrete can be taken into consideration during the con-
struction process. More details about the forward iteration method to
determine the tensioning cable forces at construction stage can refer to
Wang et al. [29].
5. Conclusions
This study determines the optimum cable forces of a curved cable-
stayed bridge based on the combination of the simulated annealing
method and cubic B-Spline interpolation curves. The finite element
model of the example bridge is established in OpenSees platform, and
the proposed algorithm is programmed by Python language. The pro-
posed algorithm is independent of numerical models, and it can be
easily applied to other finite element software, such as SAP2000, S-
FRAME, ANSYS, ABAQUAS, et al. The main conclusions can be drawn
as below:
1. The cable force distribution of each cable plane can be represented
by a cubic B-Spline interpolation curve that can make the cable
forces change smoothly. In the current study, the obtained cable
forces gradually increase from the start of each cable plane.
2. It is difficult for the objective function of the proposed method to
converge to a global minimum, but a number of reasonable values of
J. Guo, et al. Engineering Structures 201 (2019) 109813

Fig. 10. Responses of the short pylon under different load cases: (a) horizontal displacement; (b) axial force; (c) bending moment.

the objective function can be generated from the proposed method.
The optimum solution can be selected as the minimum of the gen-
erated objective function values.
3. Reasonable static responses of the bridge deck, the pylons, and the
cable forces are obtained under different load cases. The current
optimization is conducted under the dead load only, where the live
load can also be taken into account in the process of optimization.
4. Although bridge response constraints are not applied in the opti-
mization, the peak responses, such as the maximum vertical dis-
placement of the deck and the maximum stresses of the girder and
pylons have been checked to make sure that they are within the
corresponding allowable ranges.

Fig. 11. Cross-sectional maximum (Max) and minimum (Min) normal stresses along (a) deck length, and (b) pylon height.

10
J. Guo, et al.
In the current study, the cable forces are optimized under the dead
load, and only the live load is considered to verify the effectiveness of
the proposed method. In practical design, temperature effect, steel
girder fatigue effect, and shrinkage and creep effects of concrete should
be considered to check whether the critical responses are within their
corresponding limits. It should be noted that the proposed algorithm
does not take the construction sequence into consideration. It is used to
determine the cable forces at the final stage of construction. Hence, the
proposed method will be useful to practicing engineers for the pre-
liminary design of cable-stayed bridges.
Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the China Scholarship Council
under Grant No. 201806260168; the Ministry of Science and
Technology of China under Grant No. SLDRCE19-B-19; the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51778471,
51978512; and Transportation science and technology plan of
Shandong province (2017B75). The first author would like to ac-
knowledge the Faculty of Applied Science, the University of British
Columbia for their support during the UBC visit and complete the study.
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