Structural and Life-Cycle Economic Feasibility of Rooftop Low-Height Bamboo Telecom Tower Considering a Case Study from Bangladesh

In this paper, structural adequacy and life-cycle economic feasibility of bamboo as primary construction material for a rooftop low-height telecommunication tower is examined. For this, a relatively strong locally cultivated bamboo species in Bangladesh named Bambusa tulda has been selected for the project. A joint system with transverse steel bolts, with steel plates attached to these bolts, has been proposed as a mechanism to transfer a load between different bamboo members of the tower. Bamboo samples have been tested using this joint system to ascertain the characteristic compressive (40.5 MPa), tensile (53.4 MPa), and bending strength (73.1 MPa) and also the corresponding modulus of elasticity. A 5-m high bamboo lattice tower has been modeled in the three-dimensional finite-element software SAP2000. The analysis results have showed that maximum axial and bending stresses developed in bamboo members of a 5-m high tower is much less than the allowable stresses of bamboo. The top deflection of the bamboo tower has been checked and is found to be within the acceptable limit. An analysis considering a 15-year life-cycle has showed that the bamboo tower is 18% less expensive than a galvanized iron (GI) pipe tower of an equivalent height, which it intends to replace. This proves that a low-height rooftop telecommunication tower may be economically constructed using bamboo.