ABSTRACT
The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, which will cross the Akashi Kaikyo Straits with a shore-to-shore distance of approximately 4km, is a very long-span truss-stiffened suspension bridge with a main span of 1,990m and two side spans of 960m. Its extremely flexible features increase importance of careful detailed considerations on static as well as dynamic effects in the aerodynamics of the superstructure. The paper describes outline of design considerations of wind effects on such a flexible long-span bridge and their coding practice, and introduction of full aeroelastic model testings by using a big boundary layer wind tunnel with a width of 41m, a height of 4m and a working length of 30m. The tests are still in progress, and some preliminary results will be presented.
