Structural analysis of guyed steel telecommunication towers for radio antennas

The usual structural analysis models for telecommunication and transmission steel tower design tend to assume a simple truss behaviour where all the steel connections are considered hinged. Despite this fact, the most commonly used tower geometries possess structural mechanisms that could compromise the assumed structural behaviour. A possible explanation for the structure stability is related to the connections semi-rigid response instead of the initially assumed pinned behaviour. This paper proposes an alternative structural analysis modelling strategy for guyed steel towers design, considering all the actual structural forces and moments, by using three-dimensional beam and truss finite elements. Comparisons of the above mentioned design models with a third alternative, that models the main structure and the bracing system with 3D beam finite elements, are made for three existing guyed steel telecommunication towers (50m, 70m and 90m high). The comparisons are initially based on the towers static and dynamic structural behaviour later to be followed by a linear buckling analysis to determine the influence of the various modelling strategies on the tower stability behaviour.