Abstract
Telecommunication/broadcasting towers play a vital role in telecommunication and broadcasting sectors by facilitating wireless data and signal transmissions. The failure of a tower especially under a disaster situation such as earthquake is a major concern mainly in two ways. One is the failure of communication/broadcasting facilities which will become a major setback to carry out rescue and other essential operations during a disaster while failure of a tower will itself cause a considerable economic loss as well as damages to human life since these are tall giant structures in most of the cases. Presently, a strong dialogue is going on amongst the professionals regarding the seismic condition of our country with the reported earth tremors in recent times. Hence, evaluating the structural performance of existing telecommunication/ broadcasting towers under seismic loads is utmost important since almost all existing towers have not been designed considering seismic forces due to traditional belief that Sri Lanka will not be subjected to earthquakes of appreciable magnitudes. Considering the above situation, assessment of structural performance of existing towers (which were not initially designed considering earthquake loading) under possible earthquake loading with different analytical techniques was selected as main objective of this study. Accordingly, behaviour of existing four legged Greenfield towers under seismic loading using ANSI/TIA-222-G tower design code was studied and results, observations and conclusions based on this analysis are presented. ENGINEER, Vol. 47, No. 02, pp. 85-95, 2014
Highlights
With the revolutionary development in telecommunication and broadcasting sectors of the country during last few decades, a large number of telecommunication /broadcasting towers are available in the country to facilitate wireless data and signal transmissions
As per the objective of this study, selected existing four leg green field lattice towers were extensively analyzed using different analytical techniques given in ANSI/TIA-222-G-2005 [1] to assess the structural performance of those towers under seismic loading and compared with wind load analysis
It can be expected that existing towers in this height range will survive without any problem under a minor to moderate earthquake, which is the most probable type of earthquake that can be expected to a country like Sri Lanka
Summary
With the revolutionary development in telecommunication and broadcasting sectors of the country during last few decades, a large number of telecommunication /broadcasting towers are available in the country to facilitate wireless data and signal transmissions. Most of these towers have been constructed after early 1990’s with the introduction of mobile telecommunication technology to Sri Lanka. Different structural forms have been adopted as per the requirements. Since these are erected out of steel, they are relatively light weight structures and wind loads are critical loadings for the design. Seismic forces may become critical due to tall nature of these structures, but those have not been considered for almost all tower designs since Sri Lanka was considered as a country generally free from earthquakes until recently
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