Analysis of lateral displacements of a reinforced concrete tower of telecommunication systems under wind action in urban contexts

Resumo

Most of the existing reinforced concrete towers existing in Brazil intended for supporting
telecommunications systems were installed in the 1990s shortly after the “Telebrás” systems were privatized by
the Brazilian government. Currently, there is substantial growth expected in the internet sector with the appearance
of 5G in the country, and for that, there should be a new demand for the structural engineering involved. In this
context, the main objective of this work is to computationally assess the lateral displacements produced by the
wind in a reinforced concrete tower considering the geometric nonlinearity and concrete creep. For this, a useful
life horizon was defined which allows the structure to age within the estimated time for its operation. A non-linear
analysis based on the finite element method is used to operate the calculations. The loading characterizing the
problem includes the structure’s self-weight and the wind action in urban contexts. The wind forces were obtained
through a Computational Fluid Dynamic, which considers the aerodynamics of the structure and existing devices.
Herewith, it was possible to evaluate aspects related to the serviceability requirements throughout its useful life
and recommend updating existing systems in order to guarantee the quality of the service provided.