Experimental flutter and buffet suppression of a sectional suspended-bridge

This paper conducts flutter and buffet suppression of a section of a long-span bridge deck mounted elastically across a wind tunnel working section. The incident stream turbulence for buffet tests is generated by a standard biplanar grid. The bridge deck response in its two major degrees of freedom, heave and pitch. A mechanical flutter control system is developed which senses the vertical velocity of flap pivots and adjusts the leading and trailing-edge flap angles accordingly. The wind tunnel experiments show that the mechanical flutter control system can not only increase the critical flutter speed of the bridge deck but also can suppress the buffeting greatly.