Aerodynamic Study of Wind Flow through a Lattice Tower of Angular Section Profiles, Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

The advancement of technological society in general has stimulated in various fields, such as aeronautical civil mechanical naval and offshore engineering, a need to look for more sophisticated structural solutions. In many cases these solutions resort to lattice towers that, in order to meet several functional requirements, result in structures with ever more complex geometries. As such Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) arises as a tool to achieve a quick and economic analysis of wind flow around these structures, thereby overcoming limitations imposed by current codes that do not cover all structure typologies and sectional differences. Thus this work performs an aerodynamic study of a lattice tower, where the displacements and reactions caused by wind action according to Eurocode 1 (EN 1991-1-4) are calculated by the software Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis and compared with results of a CFD analysis.