NORDIC STEEL 2019

The 14th Nordic Steel Construction Conference,

September 18–20, 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark

New Eurocode for Towers, Masts and Chimneys

Mogens G. Nielsena
a
Ramboll, Denmark, Chief advisor, Wind & Towers
mon@ramboll.com

ABSTRACT
The Eurocodes are under revision these years as part of the maintenance of the codes for design of
structures in Europe under the responsibility of CEN/TC 250. The primary purpose of the
maintenance of the Eurocodes is to include the newest knowledge within the field, secondary also to
reduce the number of Nationally Determined Parameters (NDPs) to make the Eurocodes more
harmonised. Furthermore, will the changes reflect practical experiences gained using the existing
codes. However, it is CEN/TC 250 policy to minimise corrigenda to stabilize the Eurocodes.

Eurocodes for Steel Structures consist of several parts, among these EN 1993-3-1 ‘Towers and Masts”
(1) and EN 1993-3-2 “Chimneys” (2). These two parts are going to be merged into EN 1993-3
‘Towers, Masts and Chimneys’. A Project Team SC3-T11 consisting of 5 members from 5 countries
is preparing the new draft EN 1993-3.

However, some parts of these specific standards are related to safety; these will be moved from the
old parts to the new EN 1990 ‘Basis of structural Design’. Other parts, related to the wind load will
be moved to the updated version of EN 1991-1-4 ‘Actions on Structures, General Actions, Wind
Actions’.

The Author is the chairman of the Project Team preparing the new draft of the Eurocodes for Towers,
Masts and Chimneys (EN 1993-3). He has been engaged with Ramboll for more than 30 years, and
has been involved in design of towers and masts over most of Europe.

This paper will give an overview over the changes related to towers & masts and chimneys and
describes how the number of NPDs will be minimized.

Keywords: Tower, Mast, Chimney, Eurocode

1 INTRODUCTION
The overall task of the Project Team is to merge two of the Eurocodes for steel structures: EN 1993-
3-1 “Towers and Masts” (1) and EN 1993-3-2 “Chimneys” (2).

The following sub-tasks should be fulfilled:

• Reduction in number of National Choices (NDPs)
• Enhanced ease of use
• Harmonisation of the application part EN 1993-3 with the other parts of EN 1993 and EN 1990
and EN 1991
• Harmonisation of EN 1993-3-1 with other CEN and CENELEC standards
• Improved rules for bolted flanged connections
• Rationalisation of the response rules currently in Annex B to EN 1993-3-1
• Set criteria for when simplified 'beam' rules can be used for chimneys
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Structures like Towers and Masts and Chimneys are similar in many areas; They are mainly exposed
to wind load; they are dynamical sensitive and many of them are exposed to fatigue. Their reliability
level is in general accepted to be lower than for other structures. Figure 1 shown examples of a tower
(1a), a guyed mast (1b) and a chimney (1c).

a) b) c)
Fig. 1 Examples of different structures, a self-supporting tower (125m tower, Karlskrona, S, (Fig.1a)) a guyed mast
(300m mast Kisielice, PL (Fig.1b)) and steel chimneys (Fig.1c))

2 STRUCTURES INVOLVED
The Eurocode for Towers and Masts applies to the structural design of lattice towers and guyed
masts, and also to the structural design of this types of structures supporting prismatic, cylindrical
or other bluff elements.

The Eurocode for Chimneys applies to the following structures:

• chimney structures
• the steel cylindrical elements of towers
• the steel cylindrical shafts of guyed masts

The design of polygonal and circular lighting columns is not covered by the Eurocodes, and the
design rules should be found in EN 40 “Lighting columns”.

Special provisions for seismic design is described in EN 1998-3.

It is assumed that the execution of the structures is made according to EN 1090 “Execution of steel
structures and aluminium structures”. Furthermore, there are some specific requirements for steel
chimneys given in EN 13084-1“Free standing industrial chimneys”.

3 FAILURE OF STRUCTURES
Towers, masts and chimneys are slender structures exposed to the dynamics of the wind.

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Guyed masts are very complicated structures to design, due to the non-linear behaviour of the guy
ropes, their sensitivity to dynamic wind action combined with a complex dynamic behaviour, and
furthermore when combined with atmospheric icing. The number of collapses of guyed masts is far
bigger than the collapses of other structures, as for example towers. An overview over all collapses
is difficult to get. However, J. Laiho has created a database over the known collapses of mast and
towers (6). According to this, the most common cause of failure of guyed masts is ice load (70 %),
but collapses due to guy rupture appear also quite often (8 %). At least 14 collapses involving gay
rupture have been registered by Laiho, and among these was the tallest mast in the world; the 646m
mast in Poland (See figure 2a)

Guy rupture can be caused by many events e.g. cut of guys (Aeroplanes, falling objects
etc.), broken insulators (Lightning (See figure 2b)), vandalism, erection failures, deterioration of the
guys (fatigue, corrosions) etc.

a) b)
Fig. 2 Examples of failures of guyed masts: 646 m mast in Poland after failure of a guy during exchange of guy ropes
and 250 m mast in Sweden after insulator has broken, since lightning lit the oil in an insulator

Over time there have also been many failures of steel chimneys. These have mainly been caused by
fatigue from vibrations from vortex shedding due to slenderness and low weight. Consequently,
damping devises are necessary to install in the top of the steel chimneys – and other structures exposed
to vortex shedding.

Traditionally Tuned Mass Dampers (TMD) has been chosen to dampen the structures. However, over
the last years Tuned Liquid Sloshing Dampers (TLSD) have been preferred since, they do not need
maintenance (4). Figure 3 show a fracture of the pendulum hanger of a mass damper which broke due
to fatigue as the damper system was not maintained.

a) b)
Fig. 3 Fracture of part in pendulum a TMD and a installed liquid damper (TLSD)

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4 PROCESS
To reduce the number of NDPs a systematic review has been carried out by the member countries.
This review has ended up in 122 comments to EN 1993-3-1 and 39 comments to EN 1993-3-2. These
comments are studied in detail by the Project Team; adjustments are made to the content as necessary.

Furthermore, NDPs has been studied, and where there no country specific adjustments or the country
specific adjustments are specified, the possibility for NDP will be removed.

Project Team SC3-T11 goes through the NDP’s and review systematically the comments to minimise
the NDPs. The Project Team consists of 5 members from France, Germany, Greece, Portugal and
Denmark (chaired by the Danish Member). The Project Team started the work in November 2018,
and is expected to deliver a draft version of EN 1993-3 in September 2019.

For mast and towers as well as for chimneys, the partial coefficients have traditionally been different
from other structures; – this cover both the partial coefficients on loads as well as on materials.
However, the safety of the structures is moved from the specific Eurocode to EN 1990. These
elements are described in the following.

4.1 Wind load

One of the areas, where EN 1993-3-1 is very specific is for the wind resistance of lattice structures of
circular and flat sided members. Here EN 1993-3-1 gives/provides significantly lower and more
realistic values, than if the values were calculated according to EN 1991-1-4 – especially for circular
members. However, the values from EN 1993-3-1 were based on wind tunnel tests carried out in UK
in the 1970’ies on scaled models. More recent wind tunnel studies on full scale models were carried
out in Denmark, and these showed a significant reduction of the wind resistance for lattice structures
of circular members. It was proven that the turbulence of the wind resulted in a lower wind resistance
for realistic Reynolds numbers, and this is especially interesting for the design wind, see figure 4.

Fig. 4 Reynolds-dependent drag coefficients in smooth flow and turbulent flow measured in full-scale wind tunnel at
Velux in Denmark (See (3))

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4.2 Dynamic analysis

Masts, towers and chimneys are slender structures, primarily exposed to wind load and sensitive to
dynamic vibrations. Thus, the wind load and the dynamic analysis are very important for the design
of these structures. For guyed masts the determination of the maximum dynamic response is quite
complicated since the dynamic system of a guyed mast is complex and involves many
eigenfrequencies and mode shapes which also varies depended on the load in the guys. Also for
“Eiffelized” towers the forces in the diagonals must be found considering that the load is not static -
but dynamic. Over time there has therefore been developed quasi-static models to simulate the true
dynamic behaviour to simplify the analysis and design. A detailed study of different ways to
determine the maximum dynamic response of a guyed mast using static procedures involving
combination of many patch wind loading is presented in (8). The principles of these patch wind
loading are shown in figure 5, and in figure 6 is shown the principle for design of “Eiffelized”
towers.

Mean wind i=1 2 3 4 5 6

loading

Fig. 5 Application of patch wind loading according to EN 1993-3-1

Fig. 6 Application of patch wind loading for “Eiffelized” tower according to EN 1993-3-1

5 BOLTED FLANGE CONNECTIONS

One of the tasks for the PT is to improve the rules for bolted flange connections (See figure 7).
According to the rules in EN 1993-3-1 the capacity of the flange connection depends on to different
the parts: the bending capacity of the plate and the tension capacity of the bolts including a prying
factor. The formula for the stresses in the flange plates is very conservative compared to tests (5).
Furthermore, is a prying factor of 1.8 very conservative comparing it with test results.
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a)
b)
Fig. 7 Tension test of a bolted flange connection and fracture of a bolt

6 SERVICEABILITY LIMIT STATE (SLS)

Towers and masts with antennas has special requirements to the deflection and rotations in the SLS.
Especially, if directional like microwave antennas are installed. The rotation requirement is initiated
by the demand for availability of transmission signal, and the rotation requirements differ
significantly for the different operators and too strict requirements lead to uneconomical structures
specially for taller structures (7).

7 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Eurocode, EN 1993-3-1, “Design of steel structures: Towers and masts”, 2006
2. Eurocode, EN 1993-3-2, ”Design of steel structures, Chimneys”, 2006
3. Georgakis, C.T., Støttrup-Andersen, U., Johnsen, M., Nielsen, M.G. and Koss, H.H., “Drag
coefficients of lattice masts from full-scale wind-tunnel tests”, Proceedings EACWE 5, Florence,
Italy, July 2009
4. Christensen, R.M., Nielsen, M.G. and Støttrup-Andersen, U., “Effective Vibration Dampers,
Mast, Towers and Chimneys” EUROSTEEL 2017, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 2017
5. Nielsen, M.G., ”Design of Circular Flange Connections” IASS WG 4, Copenhagen, Denmark,
September 2011
6. Laiho, J. and Nielsen, M.G., “Database on collapses” IASS WG 4, Beijing, China, September
2017
7. Nielsen, M.G., “Rotation Requirements for Telecommunication Structures”, IASS WG 4, Milan,
Italy, September 2003
8. Nielsen, M.G., “Comparison of Maximum Dynamic Response for Guyed Masts using four
different Methods of Analysis”, IASS WG 4, Winchester, UK, September 1995

© Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin ∙ ce/papers (2019)