Static characteristics of multicells jointed FRP tower with mass on its top

摘要

The size of steel tubular guyed towers has become very big, expensive to transport and to erect in the field since a special crane equipment is needed for erecting the tower components. Moreover, steel is very susceptible to corrosion which causes loss of strength. The paper provides recommendations for the analysis, design and fabrication a lightweight multicells glass-fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) guyed tower. The experimental work involved material testing, fabricating the tower and testing it with a secured mass of 163 kg, 1 kW vertical turbine, mounted on its top under static loading to evaluate the structural performance of the tower. A nonlinear finite element model was developed to analyze the tower holding a mass on its top. A superimposed failure envelope was developed to predict the tower's failure load using different failure theories. The deflections and stresses obtained from experimental testing compared well with the theoretical results; and therefore, validated the developed model.