• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.803-824
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• 2014

The dynamic characterization is important in making accurate predictions of the seismic response of the hybrid structures dominated by different damping mechanisms. Different damping characteristics arise from the construction of the tower with different materials: steel for the upper part; reinforced concrete for the lower main part and interaction with supporting soil. The process of modeling damping matrices and experimental verification is challenging because damping cannot be determined via static tests as can mass and stiffness. The assumption of classical damping is not appropriate if the system to be analyzed consists of two or more parts with significantly different levels of damping, such as steel/concrete mixed structure - supporting soil coupled system. The dynamic response of structures is critically determined by the damping mechanisms, and its value is very important for the design and analysis of vibrating structures. An analytical approach capable of evaluating the equivalent modal damping ratio from structural components is desirable for improving seismic design. Two approaches are considered to define and investigate dynamic characteristics of hybrid tower of cable-stayed bridges: The first approach makes use of a simplified approximation of two lumped masses to investigate the structure irregularity effects including damping of different material, mass ratio, frequency ratio on dynamic characteristics and modal damping; the second approach employs a detailed numerical step-by step integration procedure in which the damping matrices of the upper and the lower substructures are modeled with the Rayleigh damping formulation.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2020

This paper presents a comparative structural analysis of lattice hybrid tower with six legs with conventional tubular steel tower for an onshore wind turbine using finite element method. Usually a lattice hybrid tower will have a conventional industry standard 'L' profile section for the lattice construction with four legs. In this work, the researcher attempted to identify and analyze the strength of six legged lattice hybrid tower designed with a special profile instead of four legged L profile. And to compare the structural benefits of special star profile with the conventional tubular tower. Using Ansys, a commercial FEM software, both static and dynamic structural analyses were performed. A simplified finite element model that represents the wind turbine tower was created using Shell elements. An ultimate load condition was applied to check the stress level of the tower in the static analysis. For the dynamic analysis, the frequency extraction was performed in order to obtain the natural frequencies of the tower.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.163-175
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• 2019

Multispan suspension bridges make a good alternative to single-span ones if the crossed strait or river width exceeds 2-3 km. However, multispan three-tower suspension bridges are found to be very sensitive to the wind load due to the lack of effective longitudinal constraint at their central tower. Moreover, at certain critical wind speed values, the aerostatic instability with sharply deteriorating dynamic characteristics may occur with catastrophic consequences. An attempt of an in-depth study on the aerostatic stability mode and damage mechanism of three-tower suspension bridges is made in this paper based on the assessment of strain energy and dynamic characteristics of three particular three-tower suspension bridges in China under different wind speeds and their further integration into the aerostatic stability analysis. The results obtained on the three bridges under study strongly suggest that their aerostatic instability mode is controlled by the coupled action of the anti-symmetric torsion and vertical bending of the two main-spans' deck, together with the longitudinal bending of the towers, which can be regarded as the first-order torsion vibration mode coupled with the first-order vertical bending vibration mode. The growth rates of the torsional and vertical bending strain energy of the deck after the aerostatic instability are higher than those of the lateral bending. The bending and torsion frequencies decrease rapidly when the wind speed approaches the critical value, while the frequencies of the anti-symmetric vibration modes drop more sharply than those of the symmetric ones. The obtained dependences between the critical wind speed, strain energy, and dynamic characteristics of the bridge components under the aerostatic instability modes are considered instrumental in strength and integrity calculation of three-tower suspension bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.657-678
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• 2013

For economical earthquake resistant design of cable-stayed bridge tower, the use of energy dissipation systems for the earthquake protection of steel structures represents an alternative seismic design method where the tower structure could be constructed to dissipate a large amount of earthquake input energy through inelastic deformations in certain positions, which could be easily retrofitted after damage. The design of energy dissipation systems for bridges could be achieved as the result of two conflicting requirements: no damage under serviceability limit state load condition and maximum dissipation under ultimate limit state load condition. A new concept for cable-stayed bridge tower seismic design that incorporates sacrificial link scheme of low yield point steel horizontal beam is introduced to enable the tower frame structure to remain elastic under large seismic excitation. A nonlinear dynamic analysis for the tower model with the proposed energy dissipation systems is carried out and compared to the response obtained for the tower with its original configuration. The improvement in seismic performance of the tower with supplemental passive energy dissipation system has been measured in terms of the reduction achieved in different response quantities. Obtained results show that the proposed energy dissipation system of low yield point steel seismic link could strongly enhance the seismic performance of the tower structure where the tower and the overall bridge demands are significantly reduced. Low yield point steel seismic link effectively reduces the damage of main structural members under earthquake loading as seismic link yield level decreases due their exceptional behavior as well as its ability to undergo early plastic deformations achieving the concentration of inelastic deformation at tower horizontal beam.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.523-538
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• 2017

A series of field vibration tests are conducted on the Runyang Suspension Bridge during both the construction and operational stages. The purpose of this study is devoted to the analysis of the dynamic characteristics of the suspension tower. After the tower was erected, an array of accelerometers was deployed to study the evolution of its modal parameters during the construction process. Dynamic tests were first performed under the freestanding tower condition and then under the tower-cable condition after the superstructure was installed. Based on the identified modal parameters, the effect of the pile-soil-structure interaction on dynamic characteristics of the suspension tower is investigated. Moreover, the stiffness of the pile foundation is successfully identified using a probabilistic finite model updating method. Furthermore, challenges of identifying the dynamic properties of the tower from the coupled responses of the tower-cable system are discussed in detail. It's found that compared with the identified results from the freestanding tower, the longitudinal and torsional natural frequencies of the tower in the tower-cable system have changed significantly, while the lateral mode frequencies change slightly. The identified modal results from measurements by the structural health monitoring system further confirmed that the vibrations of the bridge subsystems (i.e., the tower, the suspended deck and the main cable) are strongly coupled with one another.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.95-108
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• 2006

Wind turbines are highly complex structures for numerical flow simulation. They normally comprise of a turbine mounted on a tower thus the movement of the turbine blades and the blade/tower interaction must be captured. In addition the ground effect should also be included. There are many more important features of wind turbines and it is difficult to include all of them. A simplified set of features is chosen here for both the turbine and the tower to show how the method can begin to identify the main points connected with wind turbine wake generation and tip vortex tower interaction. An approach to modelling the rotating blades of a turbine is proposed here. The model uses point forces based on blade element theory to model the blades and takes into account their time dependent motion. This means that local instantaneous velocities can be used as a basis for the blade element theory. The model is incorporated into a large eddy simulation code and, although many important features are left out of the model, the velocity/power performance relation is generally of the correct order of magnitude. Suggested improvements to the method are discussed.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.192-200
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• 2017

With the acceleration of construction industrialization, the buildings that China has adopted the construction of industrialization technology are increasing day by day, and Precast Concrete (PC) Structure technology is one of the main technologies of construction industrialization. Compared with the traditional cast-in-place concrete structure, PC structure is more conducive to shorten the construction period, reduce the number of construction workers and the site construction waste. Nevertheless, PC structure improves the requirements of hoisting machinery in the construction site, and the lay-out and selection of hoisting machinery become an important factor influencing the construction cost. The paper regards the typical tower crane in China as the research object, and establishes the time optimization model for the lifting scheme. The influence of the different precast rate on the selection of the tower crane is analyzed. This paper obtains the time variation of the tower crane under different precast rate, provides a theoretical basis for the design of precast concrete structures under the influence of assembly construction, and lays the foundation for the selection of tower crane under the precast rate.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.78-84
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• 2012

Numerical calculations were performed to investigate the influence in aerodynamic characteristics of a rotor system by surrounding structures and the ground effect for the rotor blade on a whirl tower is also investigated. Three dimensional Navier-Stokes simulations were carried out by using unstructured overset mesh technique and parallel computation. The calculated hover performance showed good agreement with the experimental result and showed that the structures around the whirl tower did not affect the aerodynamic characteristics of the blade. The ground effect was studied by comparing with the numerical result for the out of ground condition and the result of an analytic model.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.560-565
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• 2010

This paper presents the design factor of an overhead transmission tower structure in order to reduce the tower weight. The behaviour of transmission tower structures are affected by the horizontal angle of the tower structure, the equivalent wind pressure group, the slope of the main post of the tower, the separation of the internode and the use of high-strength materials in their construction. Tower weight can be reduced by approximately 30% reduce weight by means of optimal design based on a consideration of all the above factors. In addition, the design of the foundation of the tower with the shear key installation to increase horizontal support together with a modified angle of inclination to the ground can reduce by about 37% the amount of concrete used during construction. The area of ground disturbed by the construction of the tower foundation can thus be reduced by approximately 33%. Therefore it is possible to build an environmently-friendly T/L tower with the mechanical properties of existing towers.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.4_5
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• pp.411-426
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• 2012

The Canton Tower (formerly named Guangzhou New TV Tower) of 610 m high has been instrumented with a long-term structural health monitoring (SHM) system consisting of over 700 sensors of sixteen types. Under the auspices of the Asian-Pacific Network of Centers for Research in Smart Structures Technology (ANCRiSST), an SHM benchmark problem for high-rise structures has been developed by taking the instrumented Canton Tower as a host structure. This benchmark problem aims to provide an international platform for direct comparison of various SHM-related methodologies and algorithms with the use of real-world monitoring data from a large-scale structure, and to narrow the gap that currently exists between the research and the practice of SHM. This paper first briefs the SHM system deployed on the Canton Tower, and the development of an elaborate three-dimensional (3D) full-scale finite element model (FEM) and the validation of the model using the measured modal data of the structure. In succession comes the formulation of an equivalent reduced-order FEM which is developed specifically for the benchmark study. The reduced-order FEM, which comprises 37 beam elements and a total of 185 degrees-of-freedom (DOFs), has been elaborately tuned to coincide well with the full-scale FEM in terms of both modal frequencies and mode shapes. The field measurement data (including those obtained from 20 accelerometers, one anemometer and one temperature sensor) from the Canton Tower, which are available for the benchmark study, are subsequently presented together with a description of the sensor deployment locations and the sensor specifications.