Guyed Towers Under Arbitrary Loads

A new method for the static analysis of guyed towers has been developed. The tower and guy cables may be loaded by arbitrary distributed or concentrated forces, or both, and there are no a priori assumptions about cable shape (such as the usual catenary assumption). Effect of axial forces as well as shear deformation in the tower are taken into account. The base of the tower may be in any support condition between clamped and hinged including either extreme. Cables are handled by the Method of Imaginary Reactions. For the tower, integration algorithms for the nonlinear beam-column equations are demonstrated by comparison with the exact solution for the classical problem of the Elastica. The technique is then applied to a two-dimensional demonstration problem of a guyed tower. Extension to three dimensions is straightforward and will be reported later.