December 8 (Reporter Li Wei) Suspension bridges have advantages such as light weight and material savings, among which ground-anchored suspension bridges have become a development trend in the world bridge industry. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have successfully revealed the working mechanism of tunnel anchors through research, providing support for the design of similar projects in mountainous areas.
According to reports, ground-anchored suspension bridges can maximize the bearing capacity of the foundation with controllable costs. Ground anchors mainly include three types: rock anchors, tunnel anchors, and gravity anchors. Rock anchors have the highest requirements for strata, followed by tunnel anchors, and gravity anchors have the lowest requirements. Compared with gravity anchors, tunnel anchors can better utilize the geological conditions of the anchor site, featuring small environmental disturbance, less engineering work, and low investment, and have obvious advantages in protecting the natural environment and improving engineering construction efficiency.
Currently, from a global perspective, ground-anchored suspension bridges are relatively common as highway bridge types under long-span and super-long-span conditions. Therefore, conducting research on the mechanical characteristics and failure mechanisms of the joint bearing of tunnel anchors and surrounding rock, and improving the relevant design theories of tunnel anchors, have significant strategic importance, academic value, and engineering application value.
The Computational Rock Mechanics Research Group of the Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, relying on multiple long-span highway ground-anchored suspension bridge projects under construction and planned in recent years in China, used on-site scaled tests, indoor model tests, numerical simulation tests, and structural mechanics methods to reveal the force transfer mechanism and deformation failure mechanism between the tunnel anchor structure and surrounding rock, established an estimation formula for the pullout bearing capacity of tunnel anchors based on the joint bearing of anchor and surrounding rock, and explored a new environmentally friendly combined anchor type.
This research will provide support for the design of similar projects in mountainous areas, and a series of research results have been published in authoritative journals such as Rock and Soil Mechanics.