FRP Electric Power Transmission tower and Connections Behaviour.

What is it about?

Electric power has become an essential product for existence of life. This electric power is generated in big power stations in hilly and remote areas apart from each other. For transporting the electric power from such power stations to load centers huge power transmission towers predominantly made up of steel have been created across the world. Such towers in different locations are affected by varied and corrosive environments leading to weakening of such steel towers and collapsing leads to electric power shut down. Hence power transmission towers out of alternate materials like Fibre Reinforced Plastics (FRP) to withstand such vagaries of environments are being developed in western nations and are in service also. In our nation (India) also incidences of corrosion of such transmission line towers have been reported and few investigations have been taken up. Connections behaviors in such towers made out of FRP is now taken up by this research for the first time in India. Usually Lattice steel transmission tower is connected by bolt only. It is homogeneous but GFRP is heterogeneous. It is combination of fibre, resin etc. Hence the behavior of connections by the way of development of cracks, fibre crazing, delamination are not known. With this background it was decided to study the behavior of lattice transmission line tower FRP members using Glass uni-directional fiber and polyester resin. The behaviors of member-to-member connection, connections in tower modules and model FRP tower have been investigated and findings have been made both experimentally and numerically. So GFRP tower is connected by hybrid connection which is combination of bolt and adhesive.

Featured Image

Photo by Sanket Kumbhar on Unsplash

Photo by Sanket Kumbhar on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The specimens of built-up GFRP angle sections under axial compression buckled at mid portion of the specimen and also the specimen returned to original position while unloading. Based on the experimental study, it is observed that two-bolt hybrid lap joint connection exhibited an increase in compressive stress and decrease in deflection. The influence of hybrid connection for GFRP angle member under compression increase the stress withstanding capacity and decrease in deformation. Hence, it can improve the stability of the compression angle sections. The GFRP transmission line tower with hybrid connection is able to perform with maximum efficiency among all other connections. Hence, hybrid connections can be suggested to use in transmission line tower structures.

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