• Wind and Structures
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.339-359
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• 2019

Pre-stressed concrete poles are among the supporting systems used to support transmission lines. It is essential to protect transmission line systems from harsh environmental attacks such as downburst wind events. Typically, these poles are designed to resist synoptic wind loading as current codes do not address high wind events in the form of downbursts. In the current study, the behavior of guyed pre-stressed concrete Transmission lines is studied under downburst loads. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first investigation to assess the behaviour of guyed pre-stressed concrete poles under downburst events. Due to the localized nature of those events, identifying the critical locations and parameters leading to peak forces on the poles is a challenging task. To overcome this challenge, an in-house built numerical model is developed incorporating the following: (1) a three-dimensional downburst wind field previously developed and validated using computational fluid dynamics simulations; (2) a computationally efficient analytical technique previously developed and validated to predict the non-linear behaviour of the conductors including the effects of the pretension force, sagging, insulator's stiffness and the non-uniform distribution of wind loads, and (3) a non-linear finite element model utilized to simulate the structural behaviour of the guyed pre-stressed concrete pole considering material nonlinearity. A parametric study is conducted by varying the downbursts locations relative to the guyed pole while considering three different span values. The results of this parametric study are utilized to identify critical downburst configurations leading to peak straining actions on the pole and the guys. This is followed by comparing the obtained critical load cases to new load cases proposed to ASCE-74 loading committee. A non-linear failure analysis is then conducted for the three considered guyed pre-stressed concrete transmission line systems to determine the downburst jet velocity at which the pole systems fail.