Tapered Carbon Fiber Tower deflection calculation

[bujaman]

My company manufactures carbon fiber communication towers and I have been asked to figure out a way to calculate deflection under service loads for our tapered towers. Any ideas, this one really has me stumped. Thanks!

 

[AELLC]

Value of E for carbon fiber -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_modulus

 

[JoshPlumSE]

An SST (self supported tower), not a guyed tower right? Because I'm not sure what to do if the guyed cable is a composite material. That would seem problematic to me.

Otherwise, it shouldn't be all that tough if you have a program (RISA-3D, TnxTower, et cetera) that is capable or doing a 3D truss analysis on the structure. The key to modeling is to make sure that you have the proper properties A, E, I, and density for the material and cross sections of those members.

I remember doing tech support on a couple of models like this back when TnxTower was RISATower. And, I don't recall any huge challenges. Maybe specifying some custom materials. You end up ignoring all code checks because they were all geared towards steel. But, the loading and analysis results should have been fine.

 

[rb1957]

FEA or test

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