Analysis of the seismic collapse of a high-rise power transmission tower structure

Abstract

In this paper, an explicit dynamic analysis method is proposed to calculate the progressive collapse of a high-rise power transmission tower structure subjected to earthquake; the failure rule for member elements and the effect of different ground motion inputs and tower heights on the tower's collapse pattern in an earthquake are investigated. The study results show that explicit dynamic analysis can be easily applied to member fractures and that this method is suitable for calculating the seismic collapse of a power transmission tower. The selection of the member element failure rule has a significant impact on the forecast collapse pattern of a power transmission tower in an earthquake. The compression member buckling and softening failure rule, coupling the material nonlinearity with elastic buckling phenomenon, can stave off the effort in modeling the constructional eccentricities, which result in Euler buckling. For different earthquake waves, the high-rise power transmission tower demonstrates different collapse failure modes. The static collapse pattern from a pushover analysis and the dynamic collapse pattern are very different. The actual collapse pattern of a power transmission tower during the Wenchuan earthquake and the computer simulated collapse pattern are compared to validate the algorithm proposed in this paper. Finally, the seismic collapse vulnerability of a high-rise power transmission tower is evaluated based on probability estimate method.