Abstract:With the development of materials and construction technologies, the spans of through rigid bowstring arch bridges have been increasing. However, there is still not much research on the cable force of the suspension rods for long-span though rigid bowstring arch bridges. Combined with the engineering examples, three commonly used methods for determining the cable force of the finished bridges are discussed. These three methods are the rigid suspension rod method, rigid support continuous beam method and minimum bending strain energy method. And the applicability of these methods in large-span through rigid bowstring arch bridges is compared and analyzed. The results show that the bridge cable forces of the span suspension rods determined by the three methods do not differ much. But the bridge cable forces of the short suspension rods at the ends vary greatly. The comparative analysis shows that the rigid support continuous beam method results in a more uniform bridge cable force for such large-span arch bridges, and the bending moments of the arch ribs and girders are also smaller. Furthermore, after three optimization methods are used to adjust the bridge cable forces of suspension rods at the end, it is found that it is more suitable for this project to adopt an optimization method for the short end suspension rods that is close to the cable force of the mid-span suspension rods.