Analysis of normative and scientific and technical documents in the field of testing bridge structures for wind loads

In this paper, more than 40 domestic and foreign normative and scientific and technical documents in the field of calculation, testing and research of bridge loads on wind impacts was analyzed. It is established, that in the normative documents acting in the territory of the Russian Federation it is indicated that it is necessary to check the aerodynamic stability of the large-span bridge structures and the method of such testing is partially given in the industry standards. The requirements reflected in the standards do not fully exploit the achievements of modern architectural and construction aerodynamics, they lack methods of conducting the most common tests currently available on dynamically similar models of span structures in specialized stands, there are no methods for testing complete dynamically similar models of bridge structures giving the most complete and reliable information about the behavior of the object under investigation in the wind flow. Only static tests on geometrically similar models of span structures are being considered, allowing to estimate the possibility of occurrence of negative phenomena of aerodynamic instability, without any quantitative characteristics (maximum amplitudes of oscillations). Normative documents acting abroad contain much more complete information than domestic ones. Although there is no such thing as the experimental technique itself, however, the requirements for both the purpose of the tests and the tests themselves including wind tunnels are indicated, and these requirements are much higher and formulated more clearly than in the domestic ones. Despite this, the techniques themselves, both prototyping and testing are lightly or completely absent. It should be noted that at present, despite a large number of theoretical and experimental studies in the field of aerodynamics of bridges, the theme of the interaction of bridge structures with the wind flow is not exhausted. Currently continues to register incidents of aerodynamic instability of already constructed bridge as well as bridge under construction stage. The testing methods have constantly being improved, and the rapid development of computer technology and calculation software packages makes it possible to develop methods for solving the problems of aerodynamic stability of bridge structures and numerical simulation techniques. (paper)