Construction stages of cable-stayed bridges with composite deck.

A cable-stayed bridge is built by following a construction sequence of different subsequent stages that imply changes of the geometric configuration, restraints and consequently stress and strain patterns. A study is presented about stay stressing sequences in cable-stayed bridges with composite deck for the case of construction made by the cantilever method. Initial cable forces are found through partial elastic schemes of construction stages. Different stay stressing procedures are implemented and a comparison between them is proposed in order to evaluate the differences in terms of deformed shape and internal force distribution of the deck and the pylon. Results can be useful to give practical suggestions to designers, when they have to deal with stay stressing sequences of composite cable-stayed bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]