Comparison of the Advantages of Guyed Masts to Selfsupporting Towers

摘要

For many years both guyed masts and self-supporting towers have been used for supporting antennas for mobile communications etc. The choice between guyed masts and self-supporting towers has often been determined by the tradition. However, guyed masts are clearly superior in the country side, whereas the self-supporting towers are more likely to be chosen in the urban areas. From a production point of view guyed masts should be chosen rather than selfsupporting towers, since the number of different elements are significantly reduced, which leads to easier production and logistics. Looking at the few disadvantages of guyed masts the size of the site area is one of them, since a significant larger site area is needed for guyed masts than for selfsupporting towers. Another of the few disadvantages with guyed masts has been the foundation. This is due to the number of foundations for the guy ropes as well as for the mast base, where solutions often have been chosen with a short lifetime. However, the development of prefabricated foundations has provided an opportunity of having costeffective foundations also in terms of shorter erection time. This paper gives an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of guyed mast versus self-supporting towers, including the erection time and maintenance costs of both structures. The economical aspect is discussed as well, taking the costs of the production, foundation works and the erection of the structures into considerations. Furthermore an example from Sweden provides the opportunity for a direct comparison of the economics based on experiences from two different series of guyed masts and self-supporting towers, which were designed on the same design basis, though with slightly different height ranges.