The low tower cable-stayed bridge is a combined system bridge composed of three basic structures: the main girder, stay cables, and cable towers, and it belongs to a multi-times statically indeterminate combined structure. 

The characteristics of the low tower cable-stayed bridge are as follows:

 1) The height of the main tower is low, and the ratio of the height to the span is generally between 1/12 and 1/8. The inclination angle of the stay cables is small, and they are arranged more concentratedly on the tower. Therefore, the elastic support of the stay cables to the main girder is relatively weak, and their function is more inclined to be external prestress with a large eccentricity. The height of the main girder is about half of that of the beam bridge with the same span, and it has high stiffness. The main girder bears most of the bending moment, and the vertical component force borne by the stay cables is usually no more than 30%.

 2) The whole bridge is a semi-rigid and semi-flexible structure. It can adopt a variety of construction methods, such as cantilever casting construction, cantilever assembly, construction with formwork supports, incremental launching construction, and swing construction. There are many options for the construction methods, and the design is flexible.

 3) Under the same span, the cross-section height of the main girder is approximately half of that of the beam bridge and twice that of the traditional cable-stayed bridge. Therefore, the main girder has high stiffness without appearing bulky. When combined with the low tower and stay cables, it has the advantages of small self-weight, small deflection, beautiful appearance, easy coordination with the external environment, good construction and wind resistance stability, etc. At the same time, it solves the problems of the oppressive feeling caused by the excessive height of the main girder of the beam bridge and the imbalance between the upper and lower structures of the bridge.

 4) Compared with the traditional cable-stayed bridge, the main tower of the low tower cable-stayed bridge is shorter, the inclination angle of the stay cables is small, and there are longer cable-free sections in the middle span and side span. Considering that the main girder has relatively high stiffness, there is no need to set thick end anchor cables like in the traditional cable-stayed bridge. From the perspective of stress, the multi-tower low tower cable-stayed bridge does not have the problems of insufficient rigidity in the middle span and mutual influence between the spans. The number of stay cables of the low tower cable-stayed bridge is relatively small, and the stress amplitude is small. Considering the influence of fatigue, the allowable stress of the stay cables can be taken as 60% to 70% of the ultimate stress, while the traditional cable-stayed bridge can only take 40% of the ultimate stress. Therefore, the stay cables of the low tower cable-stayed bridge can give full play to the material performance.As a branch of the cable-stayed bridge structural system, the low tower cable-stayed bridge has been widely used in expressways, railways, and municipal bridges due to its rigid-flexible structural characteristics, good appearance effect, and excellent economic characteristics, and it has won the extensive favor of engineers. In the future, it will be the preferred bridge type for bridge construction with a span of 100 m to 300 m.