International Conference on Engineering Vibration, Sofia, Bulgaria, International Conference on Engineering Vibration 2017

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NON-LINEAR FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF THE DYNAMICS OF A SLENDER CABLE STAYED TOWER
Paulo Batista Gonçalves, Eliot Pezo Zegarra, Deane Roehl

Last modified: 2017-11-09

Abstract


Growing interest in understanding the behavior of cable stayed towers is observed due to their wide use as communication facilities. They are composed by a slender tower and supported by symmetrically distributed inclined cables.
The objective of the present work is to investigate the effect of symmetries and initial geometric imperfections on the stability and non-linear dynamics of a cable stayed tower.
The non-linear dynamics of the two-degree-of-freedom discrete model was investigated analytically in recent years showing multiplicity of non-linear normal modes. Unstable coupled and uncoupled paths and high imperfection sensitivity were also observed. Here a continuous structural model of the tower is discretized by the finite element method and non-linear static and dynamic analyses are conducted. The results are compared to the discrete model showing a complex dynamic and buckling behavior.