21, rue d’Artois, F-75008 PARIS B2-213 CIGRE 2018

http : //www.cigre.org JPS B2 Technical Aspects of OHL

Conception of very high towers for crossing the river Scheldt

J. MAESSCHALCK*, Elia Engineering, Belgium

G. GLABEKE, J. VAN BEECK, Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, Belgium
J. ALLEGRINI, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology
(Empa), Switzerland

SUMMARY

To ensure the transmission of international electricity flows between northern and southern Europe
energy highways are being built across Europe. This includes building new lines, upgrading existing
lines and creating cross-border connections. In this context, the essential upgrade of the transmission
capacity between Belgium and the Netherlands requires the construction a new crossing of the Scheldt
River in the Port of Antwerp.

As this interconnection will be an overhead line, the management of the Port of Antwerp has imposed
multiple constraints. The most striking were: a minimum free height to allow sea ship navigation, a
minimum free channel width and a specified minimum free height onshore for mobile cranes. The
project at stake will cross the Scheldt River and multiple quays and will include the construction of 10
new towers between 130 and 220m high.

The current Eurocodes EN50341:2012 [1] and EN1991 [2] don’t provide accurate information about
the behaviour of these structures. Towers of this height are mainly loaded by their proper wind loading
which means that test loading in a test station according to IEC60652 [3] no longer provides a proof of
design. In the past, this uncertainty has often been compensated by increasing security margins
resulting in increasing weight.

In order to optimize economics and proof of design, the choice has been made to examine the wind
loading behaviour of the structure in a wind tunnel to calibrate the computing model. This has been
achieved by combining a number of new techniques:

• detailed 3D tower design in a single 3D model (Tekla Structures@);

• a perfect aerodynamically representative 3D printed version of the tower on a scale of 1:100;
• computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling of the tower based on the detailed design
model, including its details as by example the bolts;
• distinguishing 3D printed subparts that are scrutinized in a wind tunnel using particle image
velocimetry (PIV) techniques in order to validate the CFD model and developing a simplified
porous media foam CFD model;
• validating the design of the tower by testing the complete printed tower;
• final calibration verification of the computational wind model and feeding it into the strength
calculation model.

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This was not feasible in the past, since not all the techniques were available. But by combining these
techniques, we can now design structures based on realistic behaviour and optimise their weight
without incurring risks.

The use of this approach isn’t limited to the development of new towers or upgrade of existing towers,
knowledge obtained from the more accurate correlation between wind velocity and structural wind
loading could also be used for monitoring of the existing structures.

We hope that by repeating this study on other representative models, we will be able to improve our
tower designs’ costs and reliability through a better understanding of the influences of particle details
of the structure as there are technics to make them visible.

KEYWORDS

Tall towers; High towers; River crossing; Design test; Wind tunnel; Wind loads; CFD; PIV; 3D
Modelling; 3D Printing

1. Introduction to the design of the Scheldt Crossing towers

The Port of Antwerp, being Europe’s second largest seaport, is also home
to 4 out of 7 Belgian nuclear reactors, making it a key node for power
lines within the Belgian grid. The new Scheldt crossing is a part of a new
cross border connection between the Netherlands and this powerline node.

As this connection will take the form of an overhead line, the management
of the Port of Antwerp has imposed multiple constraints:
• 100m minimum free height for sea ship navigation;
• 80m free height onshore for mobile cranes;
• no reduction of the Scheldt's existing channel width ;
• upper limit of 204m due to the proximity to Antwerp airport;
• only white space (with no impact on current port activities) may
be built on.

The resulting project will cross not only the River Scheldt, but also
numerous quays, resulting in a total of 10 towers between 130 and 220m
high, to be constructed in separate phases of the project.

The present paper describes the design of the basic 192m-tower that will
serve to cross the river. This tower is the type from which all other heights
will be derived, by removing or adding leg extensions, each of which are
30m high (see the line drawing to the right). The main reason for not
selecting the 220m version was a height limitation in the wind tunnel.

The paper is divided into the following sections. Section 2 describes the
design options and classical optimisation. Section 3 indicates the
importance of wind load and the reasons for testing. Section 4 presents the
results of the aerodynamic study. Section 5 translates the results of the
study into design codes. Section 6 sets out our conclusions.

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 2. Step up of the powerline design and outline of the tower

A first logical step when designing a crossing is to find the best site location in the natural
environment. Normally, line design seeks to maximally exploit natural elevation, since this reduces
building height. But Belgium is basically flat and the Port of Antwerp is almost fully built up, so our
search for suitable sites was limited by three factors: the search to minimize the distance with
connection to the existing powerline nodes, the wish to minimise the crossing distance and the
availability of vacant sites on which to build. These considerations prompted us to choose the river
bank, where nobody wants to build, owing to tidal flows, but where the distance spanned by our
towers crossing the River Scheldt could be reduced from 1,041m to 921m.

The entire Scheldt crossing comprises six towers: two very tall towers (192m tall) with semi-
suspended lines (see drawing below) and four small 'dead-end' towers. This choice aimed to curb the
impact of tower flexibility on conductor sag by anchoring the span to the lower towers. At the same
time, the suspended design effectively lowered the maximum load applied loads in the direction of the
line by 30% in case of conductor rupture.

An HTLS conductor was chosen, not only to limit as much as possible the sag of the conductors and
thus the height of the towers, but also to reach more ampacity than with a classical conductor
operating to a maximum of 75°C according to Belgian regulation.

The decision to opt for a single conductor has followed the same philosophy that applied to the first
crossing (see paper 22-06 from Cigré Paris session 1976):
• a single conductor is less sensitive to galloping and requires no spacer dampers ;
• a closed conductor (with Z-wires on the external layer) is more stable under oblique winds and
also less sensitive to humidity penetration (risk of corrosion of the steel core) ;
• a maximum ampacity of at least 2,766 A;
• a high parameter for the crossing , but limited to 3,000m in order to ensure acceptable sag in
the descents to the small anchor towers to avoid the need for special vibration studies;
• a suitable diameter for audible noise limitation and compatibility with bird warning markers to
be installed on the phase conductors.

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As a result of such optimisation:
a. the towers only need to withstand limited torsional stress and/or dead end loading;
b. no extra height is needed to compensate for span length variation due to the flexibility of the
towers.

3. The importance of wind load

Up to this stage, the towers' design is no different to that of equivalent structures between 50m and
100m high. The main difference starts applying about 50m below the lower set of cross arms, where
the wind load on the structure starts becoming increasingly important, eventually even a dominant
factor, due to the optimisations efforts outlined in section 2.

The objective was to avoid laced box-type compound-member towers as the transition of conventional
lattice angle structures with compound members to laced box-type member structures results in:
a. a multiplication of the number of elements;
b. a raise in amount and extent of the involved welding works;
c. a raise in weight and building time by the number of elements used.

Static calculation shows that the lowest 2 sections of this tower are entirely dimensioned to cope with
extreme wind loads, higher up cable rupture becomes dominant. The charts below are showing the
distribution of loads’ origins. The importance of wind load is clearly apparent.

Section 1: Extreme wind Section 1: Cable rupture

Wind loads in EN50341 are described in 4.2.2.4.3 as

Q Wt = qp(h) .G q .G t .(1+0,2.sin22ϕ).(C t1 .At1 .cos2ϕ+C t2 .A t2 .sin2ϕ) (formula 1.)

For ϕ = 90° Q Wt = qp(h) .G q .G t .(C t2 .A t2 ) (formula 2.)

Where: q p(h) .G q = the wind load = metrological values = beyond the scope of the present paper
Gt = dynamic factor = function of the structure's stiffness in relation to gusts of wind
C tn = drag factor = degree of aerodynamic excellence
A tx = exposed surface

EN50341 stipulates that the G t factor for towers beyond 60m has to be evaluated, as these structures
have some flexibility. We used for the calculation of this G t factor NBN03-002-02 (1988) which is
more conservative than EN50341 and has resulted for the present tower in a value of 0.91, which
makes it’s worthwhile to be used.

The drag factor C tn is defined in EN50341 and EN1991-1-4 as a function of the solidity ratio χ, which
produces the curve shown in Figure 1.

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 Figure 1.

Applied to the lowest section of the tower (also called section 1), which is represented in Figure 2.,
this results in tha plane projected section in Figure 3.

Figure 2.: Base structure 35m width Figure 3.: ϕ= 90°

It’s at this point that the tall towers start deviating from the standards, as they consist of mainly open
space between the main members, raising question marks about how to produce a valued drag factor
by using a solidity ratio, and even, which way to determine this solidity ratio?

The following questions arise:

Figure 2: Shielded area

As the distance between the front and back surface is > 30m it’s no longer evident to assume
that both surfaces will have a shielding effect. So should we double the retained wind loads?

Figure 3: Reference area

When the solidity ratio would be calculated by using the external red borders (Figure 3) as
described in EN50341 Figure 4.2.2, it’s resulting in a C t = 3.270

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 When we eliminate the open space and only use the green areas, this produces C t = 1.908

The resulting C t factors are shown on Figure 1., the reduction is 40%. Is this approach correct?

The only design code indications we found were as follows:

EN1991-1-4 states that for complex structures wind loads may be conservatively
calculated by applying a C t value of 1.60 to every element. If this is incorporated into
formula 2, C t2 equals 3.20.

NBN B03-002-1 describes the behaviour of multiple stacked surfaces which would, if
applicable in this case, increase the drag factor by 166% to C t equals 3.177.

Generally, as clearly seen in Figure 1, results are clustered around 3.2, with one value of 1.908.

When we apply this C t = 1.908 on the above distribution charts, the extreme wind become no longer
dimensioning, but still there is a drastic reduction of the overall load by 26% on the tower's lower leg
extensions. This huge reduction follows from the fact that wind load represents 75% of the total load
exerted on these parts of the tower at extreme wind.

Section 1: Extreme wind Section 1: Cable rupture

Even higher up on the tower's extensions there is a potential – and still significant – gain of 10%.
However, here the impact is diminished, because the proportion of the cable loads increases the higher
up the tower we go. This also means that the potential gain will not apply to lower towers with high
cable loads, such as dead-end towers, though it will remain considerable for higher structures with
balanced cable loads which is only partially the case for or Scheldt crossing tower due to fact that
there is for security reasons an accidental case foreseen with simultaneous rupture of both circuits on
the same side of the tower.

All this, provided that the C t factor of 1.908 is correct, which remains to be demonstrated.

These calculation-related observations also highlight a problem to do with “design testing” according
to IEC60652 at a test station, for the tests carried out under such conditions do not take wind load into
account, thus providing only limited proof of design for the lower parts of the tower. The calculations
above may only be retained as proof of design for the uppermost parts of the tower where wind load
has a relatively low impact.

In a bid to combine optimal economy with proof of design, we chose to examine the structure's wind
load behaviour in a wind tunnel, to calibrate the strength computation model with a tested, proven C t
factor.

This was done by applying a number of available new techniques and combining them to reach a
solution.

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 4. Aero dynamical study

For lattice structures, aerodynamic forces are historically mainly evaluated with wind tunnel
measurements on tower-like structures with a rather low complexity. Tests of this kind were
performed by Lindley and Willis[4] in 1970 and by Eden and Buthler in 1983/1985 [5+6]. And drag
related studies were conducted by Bayar in 1986 [7] and Holdo in 1993 [8].

More recent studies combined CFD computer modelling with wind tunnel testing have been done by
Deng [9] in 2016, Calotescu [10] in 2017 and Prud’homme [11] in 2014. Generally speaking, they all
concluded that the currently available level of computational power made it impossible for CFD
modelling to determine the wind load on an entire transmission tower. Based on this conclusion, we
decided to measure wind load on a scale model in the closed-circuit L1-B wind tunnel at the von
Karman Institute in Sint-Genesius-Rode in Belgium.

Since the height of the wind tunnel's test section is 2m, a model built to a scale of 1:100 was used.

A detailed drawing of the tower was made using 3D design software, which in turn created a computer
model that incorporated every detail, even including bolt heads. The use of this kind of software is
becoming widespread in tower design, for although it takes longer, the results are more accurate and
can thus prevent more assembly problems prior to the start of production than faster 2D drawings that
produce a composite picture of a tower, broken down into selected views of its parts. In our case, 3D
design was an obligation as we needed an integrated single model as input of the 3D printing.

The modelling was done by 3D printing the model in 30 to 55cm

high sections. The chosen material, polyamide 12, was selected for
its printing accuracy.

Polyamide 12 has an ultimate tensile strength of around 50N/mm²,

which is 7x less than the elastic tensile strength of the S355 steel of
which the tower is to be made. Accordingly, the lattice elements of
the model tested in the wind tunnel were printed with a wall
thickness of the elements of 7x thicker than the transmission tower's
dimensions to scale, to make sure it printed well and had
sufficiently strength. This increased thickness of the L-shaped
lattice elements does not increase the area exposed to wind, so it has
no impact on the measured drag forces (what has been proven later
in the testing).

Attention has to be given as this reinforced Polyamide model does

not have the same strength as the full scale steel structure due to a
reduction of the buckling strength of the individual elements and the
difference in elastic modulus. As a result, we could not expose the
model to the full design wind load of 46.9m/s. That said, below it is
demonstrated that this limitation has no impact on the results, as
wind flow over the structure stabilises long before this velocity is
attained.

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Testing was conducted in the following stages:
a. Wind tunnel testing on sections 1, 2 and 3 with different wind speeds and varied angles of
attack, generating support reaction force values.
b. Measurement of flow fields in the wakes of the three sections using particle image velocimetry
(PIV).
c. CFD modelling of part ½ of section 1 (taking advantage of the symmetry of section 1)
d. Porous media approach as a simplified CFD model
e. After assembling the different sections, measuring the aerodynamic support reaction forces of
the complete tower.

The wind tunnel tests on the section resulted in three major findings:
 The measured support reactions which by knowledge of the applied surface results in a C f
factor (following EN1991-1-4: C f = G t .C t formula 3.)
 The observation that above wind speeds of 15m/s, the drag becomes Reynolds independent.
Meaning that wind loads above this limit result in a linearly increase of reactions as the drag
factors are stable (measured up to 29m/s).
 As 15m/s corresponds with 1/10 (234N/m² compared with 2.287N/m²) of
the extreme designed wind load (46.9m/s), the resulting loads induced in
the 3D-printed model won’t put the integrity of this model in problems.

PIV flow field measurements yielded three major results:

 Applying the theory described in references [12-13], these optical image
can be converted into drag factors.
 The images confirm the predicted effect of less shielding provided by a
wider tower. This is visually apparent from the delayed acceleration of the
extension's wake, depicted in yellow in the top Section 1 image at a
distance the width of the tower, whereas the wake is still colouring green in
the bottom Section 2 image at a distance equal to the tower width.
 Since these images show a cross-section of a slide of the structure, they can
be used to study the influences of design details, such as nodes and their
impact. In the top image the wake of single lattice elements is clearly visible.

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Stages c and d (see above) are related. Faced with the limitation of available computing power and
unable to input the complete tower in a classic CFD model, we needed to explore the possibility of
taking a simplified CFD 'porous media' approach, which could be viewed as a finite element
conversion of the solidity ratio theory in EN1991-1-4.

The classic CFD has been conducted at a half section of the section 1 extension. As
the structure is symmetrical, there would be no gain on full part section. This
resulted in a model with 160 million cells. This huge number precluded a full study
in different directions, so computation was limited to just two directions (0° and
90°), to be used as calibration input.

Since the intention behind this aerodynamic study was to deliver a correct C t factor
for the tower's design according to the methodology set out in EN50341, there was no need to know
how every individual element behaved, merely how the section behaved. This was achieved by using a
“porous media” model with only 1.7 million cells and by verifying calibration this model with the
above mentioned CFD modelling and the PIV resulted data. More details about these studies can be
found in references [14+15].

The results of these computing drag determinations were compared with the wind tests and resulted in
a confirmation of the computing modelling. This meant that the drag factors associated with the
complete tower were checked twice, once in the wind tunnel and again by the porous media model,
providing the following drag coefficients (C t values).

5. Application of aero dynamic results to EN50341 design codes

The above drag factors (C f values) cannot be input directly into the EN50341 calculations because:
 they are expressed using fixed exposed surfaces;
 they included dynamic factors;
 the wind directions differ by 90°.

After modifying the wind directions, we could apply formula 3 to formula 1, resulting in:
C t = C f / (0,91.”angle coefficient”)

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 Complete tower Section 1 Section 2

We observe that the C t value is not fixed. There are various reasons for this, one being the limited
number of measured wind directions, another the significant shielding factor at 45° when the
diagonally opposite members are recovering which isn’t accounted in EN50341 projected area
formulas. Although the present study did not aim to perform a detailed analysis, it would be interesting
to do so, as at present we are obliged to take a maximum value, leaving 10% on average unused
potential between the minimum and the maximum values.

The resulting general maximum and minimum values for the leg extension sections are shown in
Figure 1 and lie between the conventional conservative approach of 3.2 and 1.908. When applying the
maximum value for each individual section of the tower, the applied wind load can be significantly
reduced. Applied to the load distribution charts presented in part 3 of this paper, this results in the
definitive charts below.

Section 1: Extreme wind Section 2: Cable rupture

The left chart shows a 21% reduction in loads for the lowest section, the right chart shows a reduction
of only 5% for the section 2, this section is corresponding with a lower leg of a 100m high tower. This
confirms that the gains will only be realized on tall towers, above 100m where load reductions will
become 10% and more. Or, on more load balanced tower structures, without the mentioned accidentals
circuit ruptures.

Due to the time required to complete this study and the project planning for the actual Scheldt
crossing, the conclusions of the present study could not be fully incorporated into the design study
iterations. However, the goal to avoid laced box-type members has been realised and since the results
apply to an entire family of towers, they can and will serve to further extend the use of these towers,
whose extra strength they have demonstrated.

6. Conclusions

There are five main conclusions from our study.

Firstly, wind tunnel testing is a viable method, as a 3D-printed model based on a 3D design proved to
be sufficiently detailed and strong (after multiplying the wall thickness of the lattice elements as
described in Section 4). The resulting base loads can be used to deliver proof of design for the
calculation model.

In the near future, as progress will be made in metal 3D printing, it may even become possible
to verify the correct redistribution of tension among the different elements in the model as
these metal printed models wouldn’t need multiplication of the wall thickness which
influences the buckling behaviour which made it in the present model impossible to verify
internal tensions.

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Secondly, the drag factors as per EN50341 for these towers are conservative. The resulting tower
designs are sufficiently strong, but retain unexploited strength margins, which could be of interest
when seeking to optimise the costs of new towers or, even more importantly, prove very useful for
applying to existing assets in scenarios where powerline upgrades would otherwise be very expensive
or even impossible.

Thirdly, whereas this study has primarily demonstrated the proof of design, the use of 'porous material'
modelling needs to be further documented so that it could become directly available to designers
through its inclusion in design codes and design software packages, without need of wind tunnel
testing to confirm the results.

Fourthly, we monitored a positive aerodynamic behaviour of very long cross arms. The EN50341
approach defining the wind force on the cross-arms as Q Wtc = q p(h) .G tc . Atc .(sinϕ +0,4.cosϕ) seems
very conservative. Further study is needed, but particularly for structures with dense long cross arms,
there is a lower force to which the towers are exposed possible than EN50341prescribes (it has little to
no influence on small cross arms).

Fifthly, PIV images are capable of showing detail behaviour of design details which could be
enhanced. These images could also provide more knowledge of the wakes inside a lattice tower
structure if the 3D-print would be printed in an non-reflection colour or material, what wasn’t possible
with the white print colour of the present model.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] EN50341, 2012 .Eurocode 3, Towers, P. European Committee for Standardisation.

[2] EN1991, 2005 . Eurocode 1, Action on structures, Part1–4. European Committee for Standardisation.
[3] IEC60652, 2002, Loading tests on overhead line structures, Part1–4. International Electrotechnical C
[4] Lindley D, Willis D.J., 1974. Wind loads on transmission line towers. 5th Australasian Conference on
Hydraulics and fluid mechanics, Christchurch, New Zealand
[5] Eden J.F., Butler A. J., Patient J., 1983. Wind tunnel tests on model crane structures. Engineering Structures
5, 289-298.
[6] Eden J.F., Butler A. J., Patient J., 1985. A new approach to the calculation of wind forces on vertical and
horizontal latticed structures. The Structural Engineer 63, 179-188.
[7] Bayar D.C., 1986. Drag Coefficients of latticed towers. Journal of Structural Engineering 112 (2), 417-430.
[8] Holdo A.E., 1993. Reynolds number effects on lattice structures forming part of a wind tunnel model. Journal
of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics 45, 229-238.
[9] Deng H.Z., Xu H.J., Duan C.Y., Jin X.H., Wang Z.H., 2016. Experimental and numerical study on the
responses of a transmission tower to skew incident winds. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial
Aerodynamics 157, 171-188.
[10] Calotescu I., Solari G., 2016. Alongwind load effects on free-standing lattice towers. Journal of Wind
Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics 155, 182-196.
[11] Prud’homme, S., Legeron F., Laneville A., Tran K.T., 2014. Wind forces on single and shielded angle
members in lattice structures. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics 124, 20-28.
[12] Terra W., Sciacchitano A., Scarano F., 2016. Drag analysis from PIV data in speed sports. Procedia
Engineering 147, 50-55.

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 [13] Ragni D, Ashok A, van Oudheusden BW, Scarano F., 2009. Surface pressure and aerodynamic loads
determination of a transonic airfoil based on particle image velocimetry. Measurement Science and Technology
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[14] Allegrini J., Glabeke G., Alessi G., Christophe J., Van Beeck J, Maesschalck J.: Combined aerodynamic
force and flow field measurements for a tall transmission tower. PHYSMOD 2017, Nantes, France, 2017
[15] Allegrini J., Maesschalck J., Glabeke G., Alessi G., Christophe J., Van Beeck J.: Porous and geometry-
resolved CFD modelling of a lattice transmission tower validated by drag force and flow field measurements.
Engineering Structures, submitted, 2018.

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