Research on temperature effect on reinforced concrete bridge pylon during strong cooling weather event

The temperate continental mountain climate is typically characterized by strong solar radiation, high wind speed, obvious temperature fluctuations between day and night, and frequent strong cooling weather. The reinforced concrete (RC) bridge pylon under such harsh environment could suffer from severe temperature-induced durability and serviceability issues. In this paper, a general analytical methodology for evaluating the temperature effect on RC bridge pylon during strong cooling weather event is proposed considering the effect of wind, reinforcement as well as sheltering. A numerical simulation program is developed by integrating the FLUENT and ANSYS based on this model. Subsequently, a typical case study is performed and the effects of several key factors, i.e., wind, reinforcement arrangement, mutual sheltering, and terrain sheltering, on the temperature field and temperature-induced stress field are examined. The results show that the consideration of heat convection due to wind speed could result in a remarkable increase in temperature-induced stress during strong cooling weather event. Meanwhile, the influence of wind speed and wind direction cannot be ignored either, since the heat convection across the pylon exterior surface under different wind speed and directions varies greatly. In addition, relative high reinforcement ratio and the inclusion of the stirrup bar could help to reduce the temperature-induced stress at both interior and exterior surface of the RC bridge pylon. Moreover, the mutual sheltering has negligible influence on the temperature-induced stress of the entire cross-section of the bridge pylon, while the terrain sheltering leads to an increase in the temperature-induced stress difference between the interior and exterior surface.