An Investigation of Structural Effects Due to Utility Openings on Performance of Steel Hollow Poles

Hollow circular utility poles are widely used for various applications such as smart poles, street lighting poles, traffic single poles,etc. The provision of openings in these poles are essential for operational and maintenance requirements. Provisions of two openings are also needed in certain cases such as smart poles due to safety and other operational concerns. However, these openings could cause increase in stresses in the regions where these openings are introduced inducing local buckling and other structural concerns. This study focusses on reduction of local buckling capacities of hollow circular poles with dual service openings and the effect of variation of width and depth of openings on it. Two smart poles having nominal height of ۲۰m and ۲۴m was considered in this study and the effect on local buckling by these opening was modelled through ۳D finite element modelling. According to the results of analyses, buckling capacities of hollow circular poles were drastically affected by the introduction of dual openings. In most of the cases, poles exceeded the buckling capacities with introduction of utility opening unless some form of strengthening was not introduced for the critical region. Further, increase in the width of openings is greatly affected on buckling capacity than increase in height of openings.

کلیدواژه ها:

Hollow circular utility poles ، Local buckling ، smart poles ، Utility openings