Enhancing Fire Resilience of Cable-Supported Bridges: Current Knowledge and Research Gaps

Abstract

Fires are increasingly recognized as one of the major hazards causing damage to bridges and disruption in their operational continuity. As a transportation hub, cable-supported bridges are particularly critical to social sustainability and economic development. However, ensuring the resilience of cable-supported bridges in unexpected fire events has arisen as a challenge in recent years due to the lack of available standards and guidance for practitioners. In this context, this paper presents an up-to-date review of the fire resilience enhancement methods for cable-supported bridges and proposes research needs for impending decades. Representative fire incidents and the concerns of bridge managers are analyzed to define the critical fire scenarios that need to be considered in future fire-resistant designs. The fire performance of cable-supported bridges whose cables, girders, and pylons are exposed to fires are analyzed respectively. To enhance the fire resilience of cable-supported bridges, this paper compiles probabilistic methods, including fire risk evaluation and mitigation based on identified vulnerable bridges, and deterministic methods, including active and passive fire protection measures. This paper reveals that guidance on the fire resilience of cable-supported bridges should be further improved with regard to aspects including the fire performance of cable systems, the ability of cable-supported bridges to provide continued service in fires, risk- and cost–benefit-based fire resistance design, multi-level fire damage determination, and emergency response strategies.

Keywords:

• Cable-supported bridges
• fire
• resilience
• resilience enhancement
• state-of-the-art

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the submitted article.