Electric Transmission Tower
Overview
Puerto Rico’s power infrastructure has been plagued by extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes and landslides in recent history. To study their overall resilience, three towers were chosen: Guyed-V Tower, Delta Tower, and Self-Supporting Tower based on their respective roles. The main objective of this project is to investigate how transmission power infrastructure found in Puerto Rico, that runs through mountainous, heavily forested areas, and other complex terrains, can withstand extreme hurricane events. The goal is to improve the stability of structures through various means such as hardening to determine the overall resilience of the power infrastructure. Using CAD software we designed similar towers that are seen in Puerto Rico. The tower designs were tested using both the ANSYS Computational Fluid Dynamics method and in a wind tunnel to calculate the drag coefficient.
CAD Models
The towers were designed based on industry avilable models and standards. The primary software used to model the towers (i.e., Self-Support, Guyed-V, and Delta) was SolidWorks. To construct the towers I used 3D sketch and weldments to create the structure. Some other features which were utilized were trim/extend, planes, mirror, and pattern feature.
CAD model of electric transmission towers
3D Printed Models
CAD model of electric transmission towers
SolidWorks CAD Files
Result / Outcome
This project successfully modeled the electric transmission towers using SolidWorks, and 3D printed the models for testing using the wind tunnel. The CAD models were also used to perform ANSYS fluid simulation.