The increasing span of cable-stayed bridges has focused more attention on the aerostatic stability of the design and construction of such bridges. This paper presents a new method to analyze the nonlinear aerostatic stability of cable-stayed bridges including all three components of the wind load and the geometric nonlinearity. The analysis was used to investigate the effects of the wind angle of incidence, the wind load of individual bridge elements, the sagging of cable elements, the changes of tower height and the changes of side span length on the aerostatic stability of cable-stayed bridges. The results show that the wind angle of incidence and the wind loads on the cables have an important effect on the aerostatic stability of cable-stayed bridges.
