Conditional simulation of nonstationary fluctuating wind speeds for long-span bridges

This paper presents a computationally efficient method for the conditional simulation of nonstationary fluctuating wind speeds for the buffeting analysis of long-span bridges. The fluctuating wind speeds, with part of their time histories measured at some points, are regarded as a zero-mean nonstationary Gaussian vector process characterized by an evolutionary power spectral density (EPSD) matrix. The Kriging method is then applied to the random vector of the Fourier coefficients of the evolutionary vector process for conditional simulation. A mathematical proof of this conditional simulation is provided. A fast algorithm of the conditional simulation is further derived, by converting the Cholesky decomposition of a large size covariance matrix of the Fourier coefficients into the Cholesky decomposition of a series of small-size coherence matrices with much less computational time. The procedure for implementing the fast algorithm-based conditional simulation method is detailed. Finally, this method is applied for the conditional simulation of typhoon-induced nonstationary wind speed time histories for the buffeting analysis of Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong. The time domain buffeting responses of the bridge obtained using the conditionally simulated wind speed time histories indicate that the proposed simulation method is feasible and applicable.