Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

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Resilient Cities and Structures

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rcns

Full Length Article

A robust protocol to compute wind load coefficients of telecommunication

towers and antennas using numerical simulation for risk and resilience
assessment
Mohanad Khazaali a, Liyang Ma b,c, Keivan Rokneddin d, Matteo Mazzotti e, Paolo Bocchini f,g,∗
a
Research Engineer, Extreme Event Solutions at Verisk, Lafayette City Center, Boston, MA 02111, USA
b
Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, PR China
c
Key Lab of Smart Prevention and Mitigation of Civil Engineering Disasters of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology,
Harbin 150090, PR China
d
Senior Research Scientist, RenaissanceRe Risk Sciences, USA
e
Research Associate, P.M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, 1111 Engineering Dr UCB 427, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
f
Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Lehigh University, 117 ATLSS Dr, Bethlehem, PA 18015-4729. USA
g
Director, Catastrophe Modeling Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: An accurate estimation of wind loads on telecommunication towers is crucial for design, as well as for perform-
Generalized CFD protocol ing reliability, resilience, and risk assessments. In particular, drag coefficient and interference factor are the most
Lattice tower significant factors for wind load computations. Wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are
Tower panel
the most appropriate methods to estimate these parameters. While wind tunnel tests are generally preferred in
Microwave antenna
practice, they require dedicated facilities and personnel, and can be expensive if multiple configurations of tower
Wind coefficients
Tower-antenna interaction panels and antennas need to be tested under various wind directions (e.g., fragility curve development for system
resilience analysis). This paper provides a simple, robust, and easily accessible CFD protocol with widespread
applicability, offering a practical solution in situations where wind tunnel testing is not feasible, such as complex
tower configurations or cases where the cost of running experiments for all the tower-antennas configurations
is prohibitively high. Different turbulence models, structural and fluid boundary conditions and mesh types are
tested to provide a streamlined CFD modeling strategy that shows good convergence and balances accuracy,
computational time, and robustness. The protocol is calibrated and validated with experimental studies available
in the literature. To demonstrate the capabilities of the protocol, three lattice tower panels and antennas with
different configurations are analyzed as examples. The protocol successfully estimates the drag and lateral wind
loads and their coefficients under different wind directions. Noticeable differences are observed between the esti-
mated wind loads with this protocol and those computed by a simple linear superposition used in most practical
applications, indicating the importance of tower-antenna interaction. Also, as expected, the wind loads recom-
mended by design codes overestimate the simulated results. More importantly, the telecommunication design
codes inadequately identify the most favorable wind directions that are associated with the lowest wind loads,
while the results of the proposed protocol align with observations from experimental studies. This information
may be used to select the tower orientation before construction. The findings of this study are of importance for
the telecommunication industry, which seeks reliable results with minimal computational efforts. In addition,
it enhances the fragility analysis of telecommunication towers under strong winds, and the portfolio risk and
resilience assessment of telecommunication systems.

1. Introduction
Telecommunication towers are the main structures of the communi-
cation system. These towers are used to support nonstructural appurte-
nances (e.g., vertical panel antennas, fiber-optic cables, and microwave
antennas) that are essential for transmitting and receiving cellular sig-
nals and for radio and television broadcasting. In particular, lattice steel
towers are the most commonly used structures in the telecommunication
industry due to their light weight, and are usually designed in two dif-
ferent forms: (1) with a square in-plane cross-section (i.e., four-legged)

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: paolo.bocchini@lehigh.edu (P. Bocchini).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcns.2024.02.001
Received 16 August 2023; Received in revised form 12 January 2024; Accepted 6 February 2024
2772-7416/© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
where the four main members (i.e., legs) and the secondary members
(i.e., bracings) are generally made with angle steel elements; (2) with a
triangular in-plane cross-section (i.e., three-legged), in which the three
main members are made by tubular elements, while the secondary mem-
bers consist of angle or tubular elements. In this study, these two tower
classes with different bracing configurations (i.e., K and X bracings) are
considered.
The structural design of telecommunication towers is primarily
driven by wind loads. Strong winds or hurricanes can cause partial dam-
age or even outright collapse of such structures and lead to service inter-
ruptions in many cases, which significantly affects community resilience
and normal business operations, as well as the activities of the first re-
sponders. For instance, Tapia-Hernández and Cervantes-Castillo [1] in-
spected several communication towers constructed in Mexico between
1990 and 2016; they indicated that accurate and frequent assessments
of tower safety under wind loads are needed to reduce damage, revenue
losses and high repair costs. Several studies reported complete tower
collapses or partial damage due to strong winds [2–5]. Hurricane Kat-
rina in 2005 caused serious damage for nonstructural components such
as microwave antennas and fiber-optic links [6].
Telecommunication system (i.e., telecommunication towers) risk
and resilience assessments usually rely on fragility curves, which rep-
resent the relationship between the hazard intensity measure (e.g., sus-
tained wind speed for hurricane winds) and the probability of reaching
or exceeding a given damage state [7–9]. The tower-antenna(s) inter-
action affects estimates for wind load coefficients and, consequently,
tower fragility curves. Ignoring those interactions induces errors in the
calculated wind load values which, in turn, compromises the accuracy
of portfolio risk analyses and community resilience assessment. More-
over, these issues are of importance for catastrophe modeling and the
insurance sector. In fact, an overestimation of the drag coefficient would
lead to an overestimation of the tower vulnerability and, in turn, of the
expected damage, losses, and business interruption.
Considering tower-antenna interactions has become more relevant
over time since the number of towers and their diversity in terms of
height, geometry, cross-section and structural design has grown substan-
tially. Also, telecommunication tower owners allow service providers to
install additional microwave antennas at any height and in any direc-
tion. A study by Martín et al. [2] indicated an increase of 20–26 % in
the total drag wind loads for specific wind directions due to microwave
antennas mounted on the tower. Accordingly, risk and resilience assess-
ments would greatly benefit from methodologies that can estimate wind
load coefficients for any existing tower-antenna configuration.
Wind load coefficients and wind loads for telecommunication tower
and antennas can be calculated in different ways. Most practical ap-
plications and some design codes (e.g., ANSI/TIA [10]) adopt a simple
superposition to compute the total wind load, by adding the wind force
acting on the tower structure (FST ) to that acting on the appurtenances
(FA ) and neglecting the tower-antenna interaction. This approach un-
derestimates the total drag wind loads under specific wind directions
for which the antenna does not shield any portion of the tower. In other
cases, this approach overestimates the total drag wind loads because it
does not take into account the shielding effects. Also, design codes de-
termine the wind load for the case when the wind direction is normal to
the tower face (i.e., maximum drag forces) and then use trigonometry or
wind directional coefficients to consider the effect of the wind direction
[10–12]. This approach implicitly assumes that the drag coefficient does
not depend on the wind direction (i.e., drag coefficients are based only
on the solidity ratio of the normal face). This assumption leads to inaccu-
rate loads, because in reality the drag coefficients change with the wind
direction [2,13-16]. In fact, drag coefficients for lattice towers depend
on wind direction, tower geometry, members’ cross-section, and solid-
ity ratio. Structural design codes address all involved uncertainties and
approximations by introducing appropriate conservative assumptions.
Wind tunnel tests are arguably the preferred way to compute the
wind load coefficients despite requiring copious resources in compari-
67
Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
son to numerical analyses. Nonetheless, very few wind tunnels studies
have addressed tower-antenna interaction through the use of the aero-
dynamic interference factor. The engineering science data unit (ESDU)
proposed an empirical formula to compute the interference factor as
a function of the drag coefficients and the solidity ratio of the tower
[17]. However, this formula underestimated the interference factor val-
ues [15]. Holmes et al. [15] proposed another modified formula that also
accounts for the wind attack angle and the relative position of the mi-
crowave antenna to the tower, because they have a significant impact on
the airflow patterns. Martín et al. [2] performed a broader study consid-
ering different positions of the microwave antennas and wind directions;
their results were in agreement with the values obtained by Holmes et al.
[15] in most cases. Martín et al. [2] showed that the interference factors
are sensitive to tower geometry, member sizes, tower drag coefficients,
solidity ratio, and tower-antenna relative position. Thus, the experimen-
tal results cannot be generalized and more studies are required to have a
complete parametric characterization of these factors. In general, wind
tunnel tests require dedicated facilities and their results are difficult to
generalize to other configurations because of the very limited number
of cases considered [2]. Also, wind tunnel tests are expensive to per-
form, in particular for parametric studies which require testing multi-
ple tower panels under different wind directions (e.g., development of
fragility curves for system resilience analysis).
In recent years, the practical adoption of computational fluid dynam-
ics (CFD) models has become increasingly popular in many engineering
applications, due to the widespread availability of sufficient computa-
tional resources and improvements in software packages. CFD acts as
a viable solution in scenarios where the implementation of wind tun-
nel testing is not feasible, such as for intricate tower configurations or
instances where the cost of running tests for all tower-antennas con-
figurations in a portfolio is excessively high. In general, wind tunnel
tests are still preferred over CFD analysis and considered more reliable
in the professional community. However, when a full parametric study
is needed for reliability, risk or resilience assessments, the ability of
CFD to provide results for a vast array of variations and cases at min-
imal marginal costs becomes very appealing. The differences in using
the mentioned three methods (design codes, wind tunnel tests, and CFD
models) to compute wind loads and wind load coefficients are summa-
rized in Table 1.
This paper proposes a general protocol for the use of a parameter-
ized and straightforward CFD model in risk and resilience assessments to
compute accurately the wind load coefficients and total wind loads for
a telecommunication tower. The proposed protocol estimates the aero-
dynamic coefficients for lattice towers and microwave antennas in any
configuration under different wind directions and then adopts the em-
pirical interference factor formula proposed in [15] to model the tower-
antenna interaction. The protocol requires only generally available com-
putational resources, balancing accuracy, computational time and ro-
bustness. In this study, the CFD analysis was performed with COMSOL
Multiphysics® [18], but other comparable software packages can be
used as well. The proposed CFD model and its parameters were cali-
brated based on the experimental study performed by Li et al. [16] and
validated using an experimental study conducted by Martín et al. [2].
Scholars in the field who conducted extensive wind tunnel tests ex-
amining the tower-antenna interaction were consulted to have an ex-
pert opinion on the presented modeling choices and results to confirm
their validity [19]. The resulting drag forces are compared to those
calculated by a standard code [10], as an additional sanity check for
the numerical results and to gain insight on the approximations intro-
duced by the design codes. To show the general applicability of the
proposed protocol, illustrative examples are presented, involving three
panels extracted from a representative lattice tower with microwave
antennas subjected to different wind directions, with each panel having
a different geometry and solidity ratio. The Supplementary Material at-
tached to this paper includes a guide on how to perform the analyses in
COMSOL.
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Table 1
Differences in using design codes, wind tunnel tests, and CFD models to compute wind loads.

Features Design codes Wind tunnel tests CFD models

Handles drag coefficient direction No Yes Yes

Considers tower-antenna interaction Majority recommended superposition Yes Yes
Considers tower-antenna relative position No Yes Yes
Considers solidity ratio Yes Yes Yes
Handles wind direction Using wind directionality coefficients and trigonometry Yes Yes
Easy to change structural conditions and repeat analysis No No Yes
Used for design purposes Required Not needed Not needed
Used for reliability, resilience and risk assessments Not preferred Expensive Convenient
Trusted by the professional community N/A Yes Needs calibration and validation
Accuracy in wind load calculation Overestimation of the loads Used as reference∗ Close enough to wind tunnel tests
∗
In reality, field studies should be used as reference, and it is possible that CFD models are able to capture open field conditions better than wind tunnel tests.
Very few datasets are available for comparison.

where 𝑘 is a constant parameter equal to 1.8 for triangular towers and

1.2 for square towers, and b is a parameter that needs to be calibrated.
Holmes et al. [15] calibrated parameter b to be 0.5. 𝜑 is the tower solid-
ity ratio and 𝜃𝑚 is the antenna rotation relative to the normal face of the
tower (measured clock-wise). The parameters Ψ, Ψm , and 𝜃𝑚 are shown
in Fig. 1.

3. Proposed protocol

Fig. 1. Wind directions and tower to antenna relative position.
2. Wind load coefficients for telecommunication tower and
antenna
Tower drag coefficient (CD ), antenna drag coefficient (CDm ), and
tower-antenna interaction factor (i.e., interference factor) for different
wind directions are the most critical factors that are needed to accu-
rately compute the total wind loads exerted on the tower. In this study,
CD and CDm are estimated directly via CFD, considering members’ cross-
section, wind direction, boundary conditions, and variation with tower
height. For the interference factor, empirical equations are available in
the literature [2,15] and are used in this study. The interference factor
fa represents the ratio between the incremental drag force produced as
a result of attaching antenna(s) to the tower and the drag force of the
isolated microwave antenna [2]:
𝐹𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟+𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑎 (Ψ) − 𝐹𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 (Ψ)
fa (Ψ) = ( ) ( )
1∕2𝜌𝑢2 𝐴Pm Ψm CDm Ψm
where 𝐹𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟+𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑎 is the total wind drag force on tower and antenna;
𝐹𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 is the wind drag force on the tower alone; 𝜌 is the air density; 𝑢 is
the mean wind velocity in the along wind direction; 𝐴Pm is the projected
area of the microwave antenna in the wind direction; Ψ is the wind
direction relative to the main axis of the tower; and Ψm is the wind
direction relative to the main axis of the antenna (Fig. 1).
Carril et al. [20] carried out experimental studies to obtain the inter-
ference factor on a square tower with different numbers of microwave
antennas. They considered only one configuration of the antennas on
the tower and one wind incidence angle. They recommended an inter-
ference factor of 1.0 to be used for a tower panel with a solidity ratio
equal to 0.2 or less. Holmes et al. [15] showed experimentally that the
interference factor varies significantly with the wind direction and val-
ues different than 1.0 are observed in many cases; they proposed an
empirical formula that fits well the experimental data obtained from
a single microwave antenna attached to square and triangular lattice
towers:
[ ( )2 ] { [ ( )]}
fa (Ψ) = exp −𝑘 CD (Ψ) ⋅ 𝜑 ⋅ (1 + 𝑏) + 𝑏 ⋅ cos 2 Ψ − 𝜃𝑚 − 90o (2)
The proposed protocol to assess the wind load coefficients and the
wind loads is schematically shown in Fig. 2. The input data includes the
properties and parameters needed to create the structural models for
tower, antenna, and the air block, as well as the wind direction and wind
speed parameters. Moreover, the CFD model must specify the turbulence
model and mesh properties and adopt a numerical algorithm (solver).
The CFD analysis provides the wind velocity and pressure fields that can
be integrated over the tower and antenna surfaces to compute the loads.
The aerodynamic wind load formula yields the wind load coefficients
and Eq. (2) returns the interference factors, which are the main outputs
of the analysis. These results can be used to compute the total wind loads
in any direction, considering the tower-antenna interaction.
3.1. Telecommunication tower, microwave antenna, and air block models
Telecommunication towers come in different types, such as
monopole, lattice, and guyed towers. This paper focuses on lattice tow-
ers, but generalizations are straightforward. Since the tower owners
(utilities and cell phone carriers) do not publicly release structural de-
tails such as member geometries, this research relied on other resources
(1)
to set up structural models of the tower for demonstration of the proto-
col. The online database by Cell Reception [21] provides the tower type
and height for all towers in the USA. For a given archetype and height,
the “drawing collection of telecommunication steel tower (DCTST)” col-
lects details for various towers, which can be used as a proxy for the
specific tower under consideration [22]. In particular, the DCTST col-
lection includes information on a group of lattice steel towers that have
general configurations used in the USA. In this study, DCTST serves as
a specific illustration, although the protocol can be broadly applied to
various tower configurations. While this approach may not guarantee
accurate results for a specific tower, it is sufficient for regional portfo-
lio analysis, where the structural characteristics of each tower are not
crucial, but their aggregate performance is. Moreover, when studying
telecommunication towers, engineers can count on standardization and
repetition of the structural elements and design, which makes towers
much more similar to each other than, for instance, buildings [7].
Telecommunication towers are formed by assembling several stan-
dardized panels. Given the similarity among tower panels, it is preferred
to set up the structural model in a parametrized way to enable generat-
ing a variety of tower models by adjusting only a few parameters. In par-
ticular, the structural model can be built as a function of the panel width,

68
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
Inputs
Problem definition
---------------------------------------
• Tower parameters
• Antenna parameters
• Air block parameters
• Materials
• Wind speed
• Wind direction parameter
Analysis parameters
---------------------------------------
• Turbulence model
• Boundary conditions
• Mesh
• Solver
Outputs
Wind load coefficients
---------------------------------------
• Drag wind coefficients
• Lateral wind coefficients
Eq. (2)
Interference factors
Fig. 2. Main parts of the proposed CFD protocol.
panel height, general topology, and members’ cross-sections. Moreover,
parameter Ψ is added to describe the rotation of the panel with respect
to the wind direction, which enables investigating the tower response
to varying angles of wind incidence (Fig. 1).
It is also preferable to create separate parameterized models for the
tower panel and the antennas to facilitate the investigation of various
configurations, when using the proposed protocol. For instance, if a new
antenna with different geometry is placed on the tower, there is no need
to create a new model of the tower panel, only of the new antenna
(which may also be available from another study). The telecommuni-
cation industry has classified four typical microwave antennas, namely:
microwave antenna without radome, microwave antenna with radome,
microwave antenna with cylindrical shroud, and grid microwave an-
tenna. Once a parametrized microwave antenna model is available, it is
possible for an analyst to simply create an instance of the model with
the required geometry by adjusting only a couple of relevant parameters
(e.g., radius and height of the antenna). The wind direction relative to
the antenna(s) must also be considered by using parameter Ψm (Fig 1).
For the sake of computing the wind load coefficients, the structural
models (i.e., tower panel and microwave antenna) can be defined as
rigid bodies, so that there is no need to define the material properties
and run a structural analysis. In fact, each panel is studied separately, as
customary in wind tunnel tests, so that empirical results can be used for
calibration and validation of the numerical models. A side effect of this
Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
CFD results
-----------------------------
CFD analysis Wind velocity fields and
pressure fields on
structural surfaces
Eq. (3)
Wind loads
-----------------------------------
Eq. (4) • Drag wind loads
• Lateral wind loads
Eq. (7) Compute the total wind loads
considering tower-antenna
interaction
choice is that the relative displacements of the elements of a single panel
are small, and the resulting effects of fluid-structure interaction are neg-
ligible. This conclusion was confirmed by experts in the field [19]. The
case would be different if the entire tower was examined, because the
height of the structure would result in large displacements that neces-
sitate a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis. It is well established
and can be shown by FSI studies on flexible structures (e.g., vegetal el-
ements, coupled rigid-flexible system in a flowing soap film) that drag
forces occurring on flexible bodies are different from those occurring on
rigid bodies due to deformation and flow patterns [24,25]. Moreover,
because of their structural flexibility, the bending of slender structures
under strong wind changes the projected area and reduces the drag co-
efficients [24,25]. However, Chapman et al. [23] determined that these
effects are effectively negligible when dealing with slender structures
made of metal, like telecommunication towers.
The air block is a box that represents the volume of area relevant to
the study. Based on sensitivity analyses performed as part of the present
study, it is recommended to set an airbox of size Xair equal to 4 to 8
times the panel width in the X direction and size Yair equal to 5 to
10 times the panel width in the Y direction, while its height Zair must
be the same as the panel to obtain robust results. The top panel is an
exception, because it requires an airbox at least twice as tall as the panel
itself, as it will be explained in Section 3.3 when discussing boundary
conditions.
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M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
3.2. Turbulent flow models
After extensive investigations, it was concluded that the best turbu-
lence model for this type of analyses is one that augments the Reynolds-
averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) formulation. There are several turbu-
lence models based on the RANS formulation, which differ in terms
of accuracy, robustness and computational time. The RANS turbulence
model is recommended because it takes into consideration the turbu-
lent flow oscillations over time and treats them in a time-averaged sense
[25]. It is also possible to use other turbulence models, which augment
the Large Eddy Simulation (LES). These models are recommended when
a full wind load simulation is necessary (uplift, longitudinal, lateral and
shear wind loads such as in buildings), but they require a very fine mesh,
which leads to high computational costs and large memory requirements
[26,27]. For the sake of determining the wind load coefficients, the ad-
vantages of these models were deemed negligible, and their additional
complexity unjustified.
In this study, three popular turbulence models based on the RANS
formulation were considered and tested on several tower panels, namely
the 𝐾 − ε, 𝐾 − ω, and Spalart-Allmaras models. The 𝐾 − ε model re-
solves the flow field at the boundary layer based on an analytically
defined wall function. The wall function is an empirical function that
is used to model the behavior of the airflow close to the wall (i.e., the
boundary of the air block). For instance, the analytical wall function for
rough walls by Nikurade is one of the most commonly used [28,29].
This wall function applies a theoretical lift-off from the wall when sim-
ulating the flow field. In other words, the fluid flow simulation starts
at a fixed distance (lift-off) from the wall. Such approximation led to
inaccurate results in our investigations. Enhanced wall functions may
yield better results, but the fact that the accuracy of the model depends
on the wall function is an issue in itself. In fact, this requires the an-
alyst to calibrate additional parameters and make assumptions which
may or may not apply to the problem at hand. This issue is solved by
using the 𝐾 − ω model. In some environments for CFD analysis, such
as COMSOL, the 𝐾 − ω model implements an automated wall function
that resolves the flow field all the way down to the wall (using a low
Reynolds number formulation), but its performance is particularly sen-
sitive to the mesh size (i.e., a fine mesh is needed). Also, the 𝐾 − ω
model accuracy is sensitive to the initial guess of K and ω that are es-
sential parameters in estimating the turbulent viscosity. Moreover, the
𝐾 − ω model has convergence problems, in particular when dealing with
complex geometries such as lattice towers. In this study, it was found
that the convergence problems could be overcome by properly adjusting
mesh sizes, tolerance, and number of iterations. However, even after all
the tuning to reach convergence, the analyses yielded inaccurate results
with very long simulation times. For example, a tower panel analysis
required five to six hours on regular desktop computer with Core(TM)
i7–2600 CPU @ 3.40 GHz and 16.0 GB installed RAM, considering only
one wind direction. This inaccuracy in the results might be related to
the initial guess of the solution and/or to the refinement in the mesh.
However, a model that is so sensitive to the initial guesses is not ro-
bust enough to be recommended for general practical applications. To
avoid the issues of 𝐾 − ε and 𝐾 − ω, the Spalart-Allmaras model is rec-
ommended instead. This model is an improved version of RANS which
shows numerical stability, good convergence, and satisfactory results
for many engineering applications, in particular for airfoil and turbine
blade applications for which it was originally calibrated. Our analyses
confirmed that the Spalart-Allmaras model satisfactorily balances ac-
curacy, computational time, and robustness. In particular, the model
proved to be robust with respect to the mesh size and provided reason-
able results even with relatively coarse meshes for which other turbulent
flow models did not converge. Compared to the other available turbu-
lent flow models, the Spalart-Allmaras model uses a single additional
variable, i.e. the undamped turbulent kinematic viscosity 𝑣̃ to solve the
RANS formulation. This quantity is set to 𝜈̃ = 0 on the boundary of a
wall (realizing a no-slip boundary condition), behaves linearly near the
70
Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
wall where viscous effects dominate (low Reynolds numbers) and, in the
analyses performed in this work, takes the value 𝜈̃ equal to three times
the kinematic viscosity (𝜈) in the far-field (e.g., at the inlet boundary
of the air volume, where the wind velocity is also imposed). Note that
this choice is compatible with what suggested in the original work of
Spalart and Allmaras [30], where more details about the formulation
can be found. The recommended boundary conditions are detailed in
the supplementary material. The main advantage of the Spalart-Allmaras
method over the 𝐾 − ε and 𝐾 − ω methods is that the flow in the log
layer (near-wall region) is resolved directly as 𝜈(𝑢
̃ 𝑑 ), where 𝑢𝑑 is the ve-
locity field tangential to the wall computed at a distance 𝑑 = ℎ∕2 from
the wall itself, being ℎ the size of the mesh. Since 𝜈(𝑢
̃ 𝑑 ) behaves linearly
in the near-wall region, it is easier to solve than the velocity field itself,
which gives the Spalart-Allmaras method an advantage in terms of effi-
ciency and stability over the 𝐾 − ε and 𝐾 − ω methods. To summarize,
this technique allows the analyst to capture the details of the bound-
ary layer and near-wall flow physics with good accuracy provided that
the mesh is sufficiently fine, but without the need for an excessively
fine mesh grid as in the 𝐾 − ε and 𝐾 − ω methods. In computational en-
vironments like COMSOL, the Spalart-Allmaras model takes advantage
of the automatic wall treatment that can resolve the entire flow field
down to the solid wall, where the viscous sublayer and buffer layer are
located. The benefit of the automatic wall treatment is that it switches
between a low Reynolds number formulation and a wall function for-
mulation depending on the robustness and accuracy of the outcomes
[25,30]. The model employs a robust wall treatment formulation when
a coarse mesh is used, while a low Reynold number formulation is used
with dense meshes.
It should be mentioned that there is active research in this field and
other turbulence models could yield even better results. For instance,
the shear-stress transport (SST) and improved 𝐾 − ε (i.e., low Reynold
𝐾 − ε model) are promising, even though for this specific application
they would have a large computational cost that at the moment would
discourage their application in practice. On the other side of the spec-
trum, the Algebraic yPlus and L-VEL turbulence models deliver robust-
ness and require low computational time, but their accuracy is too low
for these applications [25].
3.3. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis
Although the Supplementary Material attached to this paper provides
detailed guidance on how to set up and run the CFD analysis in COM-
SOL, this section highlights some important findings and modeling rec-
ommendations that apply to any CFD software. A critical parameter that
is used to scale the boundary layers of the fluid flow simulation is the
reference length scale. In our study, it was found out that an ideal value
for the reference length is the average of the tower base dimensions and
its height. Setting the reference length scale to this value or to slightly
lower values leads to results that closely match experimental data.
Fig. 3 shows the walls of the airboxes used for tower and antenna.
In all CFD software packages, wall conditions can be assigned as “slip”
or “no slip”. The slip wall condition allows the fluid (i.e., air) to move
tangentially along the wall, and only prevents the fluid from moving
outside of the domain (i.e., the velocity normal to the wall is zero, while
the tangential velocity is nonzero). This condition is appropriate when
on the other side of the boundary there is more fluid, moving in a similar
way as the one inside the airbox. In contrast, the no slip wall condition
is used to represent a still, solid object that opposes the fluid’s motion in
all directions. In other words, both the normal and tangential velocities
of the fluid are zero at a no slip wall. For telecommunication towers, the
choice of slip or no slip conditions for the walls depends on the examined
tower panel location. For the tower panel at the ground level, the base
is fixed to the ground while its top is connected to another panel. In
this case, the roughness of the ground and the presence of obstacles can
slow down the air movement, and the velocity approaches zero, which is
well captured by modeling the bottom wall with a no slip condition. The
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
Fig. 3. Wall definitions a) Tower body and the air block boundary conditions and b) Microwave antenna and the air block boundary conditions.
other faces of the air block (left, right and top) are actually immersed
in more air, so they can be modeled with the slip condition. For panels
located in the middle of the tower, all four lateral walls are submerged in
more fluid that moves in the direction of the wind, so the slip condition
is appropriate for the left, right, top, and bottom walls (Fig. 3). Similar
considerations apply to the bottom, left, and right walls of the top-most
panel in the tower, but special consideration needs to be given to its top
wall. In this case, the top wall of the air block needs to be placed far
from the top face of the tower (at least twice the panel height) to allow
the fluid to move smoothly over the tower without interfering with the
(slip) wall which would preclude vertical displacements (i.e., the top
wall of the air block is not flush with the top face of the tower panel,
while the bottom wall of the air block is flush with the bottom face of
the tower panel).
Even though the boundary conditions just described are the most
realistic, we performed several tests on different tower panels by chang-
ing the wall boundary conditions and observed very small differences
in the estimated drag forces using these slip or no slip conditions (ap-
proximately 0.05 %). This is due to the fact that the size of the airbox
compared to the tower is such that the boundary conditions have small
effect on the pressure against the tower, and the viscous forces devel-
oped at the no slip walls are negligible. Given that the slip condition at
all lateral walls reduces the computational cost of the analysis and does
not impact the results, it is recommended to use the slip condition also
for the walls of the panels connected to the ground. This approximation
is common in practice [31,32]. Thus, slip wall is used to model all men-
tioned walls of the air block in case of the tower panel and as well for
the antenna. On the other hand, the no slip condition needs to be used to
model the fluid flow boundary with the structural elements (i.e., tower
panel and the microwave antenna). Yang et al. [32] have used similar
boundary conditions in performing CFD analysis and managed to elimi-
nate the effect of boundary layers in the wind tunnel to replicate similar
conditions in their experiments. In this analysis, the antenna is placed in
the middle of the air block (i.e., does not touch any wall) where the fluid
can move freely around it and not interfering with the air block walls.
The fluid velocity used for the test is set as boundary condition for the
inlet wall. The outlet wall, on the other hand, is set with the boundary
condition in which the air pressure is equal to the atmospheric pressure.
Different mesh types have been investigated to determine the best
modeling option. The domain occupied by the fluid requires a three
dimensional representation and the best results were obtained with un-
structured tetrahedral elements. The tower and antenna are modeled
as rigid bodies, so only their lateral surfaces are relevant and can be
mapped with two dimensional elements. Unstructured triangular ele-
ments are employed to mesh the external surface of the tower panel,
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Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
which has the benefit of being compatible with the air tetrahedrons.
The lateral surface of the microwave antenna uses a mesh of quadrilat-
eral elements, while the front and back sides use unstructured triangular
elements. These mesh options are available in all software packages.
A careful choice of solver is also essential to run the CFD analysis.
Since winds can be considered stationary [33] and the output of the
analysis (i.e., lateral and drag coefficients) is not changing over time in
an average sense [34], a steady-state analysis is sufficient. The stationary
solver Parallel Sparse Direct Solver (PARDISO) is used as liner system
solver and a segregated solver is used to handle the fluid parameters
(velocity, pressure, and turbulence variables) for a segregated solution
approach (dividing the solution process to sub-steps). Finally, to account
for different wind directions (Ψ), a parametric study done by setting a
parametric sweep can be carried out. In this way, the analysis is repeated
for various rotations of the structure around its vertical axis over the
specified range of wind incidence angles.
For each wind direction, the CFD model computes the velocity field
and the pressure field. Then, the total stresses can be simply found by
summing pressure stresses and viscous stresses. COMSOL simplifies this
process and calculates all values of total stresses, viscous stresses and
pressure stresses on each element of the structure. The forces vector 𝑭
is computed by integrating the total stresses tensor (𝝅) projected onto
the normal to the surface (𝒏) over the surface (𝑆) of the tower:
𝑭 (Ψ) = [𝒏 ⋅ 𝝅(Ψ) ] 𝑑𝑆 (3)
∫∫
𝑆
Eq. (3) is also used to estimate the forces vector on the antenna by
replacing Ψ with Ψm . In this study, Ψ and Ψm are measured in a clock-
wise direction (Fig. 1). Then, the drag and lateral wind load coefficients
are simply estimated using the aerodynamic wind load formula and the
forces computed from Eq. (3). For instance, the tower panel drag coef-
ficients (CD ) are computed as:
2 ⋅ 𝐹𝑦 (Ψ)
CD (Ψ) = (4)
𝜌 ⋅ 𝑢2 ⋅ 𝐴P (Ψ)
where 𝐹𝑦 is the along wind load component (i.e., drag force 𝐹𝐷 ) of 𝑭 ; 𝜌
is assumed to be equal to 1.225 kg/m3 in this study; and 𝐴P is the pro-
jected area associated with each wind direction. It should be noted that
the computation of 𝐴P is laborious because in lattice structures members
shield each other. In other words, the calculation of 𝐴P is not straight-
forward and is based on the modeler judgment to select which member’s
surface is directly prone to wind. To avoid the complexity involved in
the computation of the projected area, the reference area is frequently
used as alternative in the analysis and design of lattice towers [2,10-
13,15,35,36]. As a result, it is customary to use only one reference area
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
(𝐴𝑟 ) for all wind directions. The reference area is defined as the net area
of the face directly invested by the wind when Ψ = 0°:
( ) | |
𝐴𝑟 = 𝐴 P Ψ = 0 o = |𝑛𝑦 | 𝑑𝑆 (5)
∫ ∫ | |
𝑆̃ (Ψ=0o )
|𝑛𝑦 | is the absolute value of the y component of the vector normal
to the surface; 𝑆̃ (Ψ) is the surface exposed to the wind for direction Ψ.
The procedure is adapted to compute the lateral coefficients (CL ) using
the lateral wind load component (i.e., 𝐹𝑥 ) computed by Eq. (3). In this
analysis, the lateral wind component is called 𝐹𝐿 .
Similarly, the drag coefficients of the microwave antenna (CDm ) are
calculated using Eq. (4), by replacing 𝐴P with 𝐴Pm . The projected area
of the microwave antenna (i.e., 𝐴Pm ) is computed numerically:
( ) | |
𝐴Pm Ψm = |𝑛𝑦 | 𝑑𝑆 (6)
∫ ∫ | |
𝑆̃ (Ψm )
Here, the projected area is used because the antenna has a simple
geometry. It is also possible to use the reference area instead.
Once, the wind load coefficients for tower panels and antenna are
computed, Eq. (2) is used to compute the interference factor. Finally,
the total drag forces (𝐹𝐷𝑇 ) resulting from the tower and the antenna
interaction are computed using Eq. (7):
1 [ ( ) ( )]
𝐹DT (Ψ) = ⋅ 𝜌 ⋅ 𝑢2 ⋅ CD (Ψ) ⋅ 𝐴𝑟 + fa (Ψ) ⋅ CDm Ψm ⋅ 𝐴Pm Ψm (7)
2 cases are considered. First, a tower panel with 5 cells, as shown in Fig. 4.
4. CFD model calibration and validation
The accuracy of the CFD analysis is highly dependent on the assump-
tions and approximations introduced in the models, such as the selected
turbulence model, mesh size, wall functions, boundary conditions, and
the structural model (i.e., rigid body). Previous research indicates that
CFD results with an average error up to 10 % are still acceptable for
some applications [37,38]. To demonstrate the sensitivity of fragility
curves to wind load coefficients and determine the necessary level of ac-
curacy in the CFD results, we studied as example an archetype 35 m high
steel monopole tower subjected to wind loads. The tip displacement is
a common “engineering demand parameter” used in structural fragility
analyses as a proxy of the global structural response, and a way to assess
the level of damage. For demonstration purposes, it was assumed that
the tower is located in open terrain and under a design wind speed set
equal to 40 m/s. We used the aerodynamic wind load formula [35] to
compute the load applied at the tip of the tower. The drag coefficient
was approximated by a random variable having a lognormal probability
distribution with mean equal to 1.2 and coefficient of variation equal
to 0.42, based on the study performed by Giaccu and Caracoglia [39].
Failure was defined as the tip displacement exceeding 1 % of the tower
height [39]. A Monte Carlo simulation with one million samples was
conducted and the statistics of the tip displacement were calculated.
We observed that increasing the mean value of the drag coefficient by
10 % can increase the probability of failure in the structure by 31 %,
suggesting that structural reliability estimates can quite be sensitive to
the drag coefficient. In particular, it was determined that changes in
the drag coefficient larger than 6.5 % can lead to significant changes in
the tower reliability index. On the other hand, our preliminary studies
show that if the error on the wind load parameters is capped at 5 %,
then the potential error on the reliability index is substantially smaller
than 5 %. Thus, our goal in this study is to calibrate a CFD model with
errors smaller than 5 %.
The protocol was calibrated using the experimental works by Li et al.
[16] on a square tower panel with round members. The accuracy of
the results is very sensitive to the mesh size, air block dimensions, and
tower location inside the air block. For example, very large discrep-
ancies with the experimental results (i.e., up to 40 %) were observed
when using inappropriate mesh types and sizes and small air block di-
mensions. A convergence test examining different mesh sizes and air
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Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
block dimensions was conducted. The test stopped when the results of
the drag forces reached stability, meaning that the relative difference
between the precedent and subsequent analyses was less than 1.5 %.
In this analysis, the drag forces and drag coefficients as a function of
the wind direction were calculated to calibrate these parameters. It is
noted that in most cases a fine mesh is needed to accurately estimate
the results (e.g., 2.5 million elements for a single panel). Also, large
air block dimensions are required in most cases, as recommended in
Section 3.1 to obtain stability in the results. When the modeling pa-
rameters recommended in the previous section were used (e.g., using
fine unstructured tetrahedral elements to model the fluid and unstruc-
tured triangular elements to mesh the external surface of the tower),
the results of the analysis were very close to the experimental results, as
shown in Table 2. It can be seen that the maximum absolute deviation s
is 5.7 % at Ψ= 0° and a deviation less than 2 % is observed for all other
wind directions. The average error in the drag coefficient computations
under different wind directions is 2.43 %, which is consistent with the
goal of keeping the error lower than 5 %.
Another important parameter that needs to be calibrated carefully
is the tower location inside the air block. For this purpose, a triangular
lattice tower panel was examined. This second example served also as a
way to test the application of the protocol to a different type of tower.
The tower legs have a circular cross-section, while the horizontal and di-
agonal bracings are made with angle cross-section. In this analysis, four
The focus of the analysis is on the three central cells (i.e., cells 2, 3, and
4), but the analysis region is expanded to include one cell above and one
below, to capture well the fluid motion at the interface between cells 1
and 2 as well as cells 4 and 5. This case is used as reference and compared
against the results obtained with cases including only the three central
cells. Second, the tower panel with the three central cells is modeled by
leaving a large space between the top face of the tower panel and the top
wall of the air block. In this case, the airflow can move freely at the top
without interacting with the structure (i.e., freestream). Third, the top
and bottom walls of the air block are flush with the top and the bottom
faces of the tower panel. Fourth, the tower panel is positioned in the
middle of the air block. The wind fields resulting from the CFD analyses
for these four cases are presented in Fig. 5. Based on the simulated drag
forces at Ψ= 0°, there is a small discrepancy of 2.2 %, 0.14 %, and 3.9 %
for cases 2, 3, and 4 compared to the reference case 1. Therefore, case 3
that is associated with minimum discrepancy is confirmed to be the best
modeling strategy, which provides accurate results while enabling the
study of separate tower panels and avoiding unnecessary computational
costs due to using a large air block. Case 3 captures well the wind field
velocity/stresses and the continuity in the boundary conditions. In all
analyses, we also realized that placing the tower close to the inlet wall
(i.e., Xair/2 and Yair/5) leads to accurate results. This is consistent to
the practice of placing the structural model close to the region where
the fans are installed, which is customary in wind tunnel tests [2,14,20].
For validation, the structures investigated in the experimental work
performed by Martín et al. [2] were modeled to assess the drag coeffi-
cient results using the proposed protocol and compare them with the ex-
perimental results. The experimental work studied different tower con-
figurations, but this analysis was performed on the square tower panel
with 6 m height and 1.17 m width and a tower panel with two antennas
under normal wind (Ψ= 0°). The two configurations are shown in Fig. 6.
In both cases, our analyses show general agreement and a discrepancy
much smaller than 5 % on the drag coefficients, as shown in Table 3.
As an additional qualitative check on the results, we studied the trend
of the drag coefficients for the isolated antenna with respect to the wind
incidence angle and compared our findings with experimental results
[2,15]. In this analysis, we did not perform a quantitative comparison
because the antennas used in the experiments and those considered in
our study have different geometry. However, both the experimental and
numerical results show maximum drag coefficients at Ψ= 0° and mini-
mum drag coefficients at Ψ= 90°, and they follow a very similar trend.
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Table 2
Experimentally and numerically estimated drag coefficients (calibration analysis).

Wind angle (Ψ) Experimental drag coefficient Simulated drag coefficient Difference [%]

0° 1.401 1.481 −5.7

15° 1.385 1.409 −1.7
30° 1.430 1.412 1.2
45° 1.317 1.302 1.1

Fig. 4. Tower panel consists of five cells (the reference case).

73
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Fig. 5. Velocity field of the CFD analysis for a) tower model with compensating segments (reference case), b) tower model with large air domain space from the top
(case 2), c) tower model flush with the air block faces (case 3), and d) floating tower (case 4).

Fig. 6. Structural models of the tower and antenna simulated based on experimental study by Martín et al. (2016).

74
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
Table 3
Experimentally and numerically estimated drag coefficients (validation analysis). For the
experimental results, the case with turbulence intensity equal to 0.2 % is considered.
Drag coefficient computations at Ψ = 0°
Model Experimental results
Tower panel 2.15
Tower panel with two antennas 4.20
Table 4
Geometry of the three examined tower panels in the numerical example.
Tower panel number Leg section (mm) Bracing section (mm)
9 ∅114×5 L63×5
6 ∅180×10 L70×5
2 ∅219×12 L80×6
5. Numerical examples
The proposed protocol is applied to a tower with structural char-
acteristics inspired by the DCTST collection [22]. The tower contains
ten panels with equilateral triangular cross-section, as shown in Fig. 7.
The total height of the tower is 50 m and its width at the base is 5.10 m.
Each panel has the main members made with a tubular cross-section and
the secondary members made with an equal-legged angle cross-section.
Three tower panels located at different heights along the tower (2, 6,
and 9 which are highlighted in red in Fig.7) are examined to show the
generality and robustness of the proposed protocol. Panel 2 features K-
bracings and is located at 5 m from ground. Panel 6 features X-bracings
and is located at 27 m from the ground. Panel 9 is located at 43 m from
the ground and has X-bracings like panel 6, but while panels 2 and 6
are tapered, panel 9 is straight. Table 4 provides the structural details
of each tower panel, which are used to build a specific instance of the
parametric model described in Section 3.1.
A typical cylindrical microwave dish antenna of 1.80 m in diam-
eter is considered, with geometric details taken from the RFS catalog
[40]. The characteristics of the selected microwave dish are portrayed
in Fig. 8. The radius and the height of the cylinder (dimensions ∅/2, B,
and C in Fig. 8) are used in the parametrized model to create an instance
of this antenna. Once the structural models are created, the procedure
described in Secs. 3.2 and 3.3 is applied to perform the CFD analysis.
The meshes for the tower body and the microwave antenna are shown in
Figs. 9(a) and (b), respectively. In this analysis, panel 2 is placed within
an air block of size 16 m x 16 m x 5 m and modeled with 2.1 million el-
ements. Panel 6 is placed within air block of size 11 m x 13 m x 6 m and
modeled with 1.3 million elements. Finally, panel 9 is placed within air
block of size 8 m x 10 m x 5 m and modeled with 3.3 million elements.
The microwave antenna is placed within air block of size 11 m x 11 m
x 11 m and modeled with 1.0 million elements.
6. Results and discussion
6.1. Drag and lateral coefficients
The drag and lateral wind forces and coefficients of each tower panel
under wind attack angles ranging from 0° to 120° with an increment of
15° are numerically assessed. Fig. 10 shows the drag force (𝐹𝐷 ) and lat-
eral force (𝐹𝐿 ) directions and the tower position at Ψ= 0°, 60°, and 90°.
Due to the symmetry of the equilateral triangle, the CFD results are ex-
pected to be identical for two tower positions shifted by Ψ= 120° and,
therefore, there is no need to examine wind directions for Ψ > 120°. The
domains of analysis for the three examined panels at Ψ= 0° are shown in
Fig. 11. Following the computational procedure described in Section 3.3,
the drag and lateral forces and their coefficients for different wind di-
rections are estimated and the results are shown in Table 5. The table
also reports the reference area and the Reynolds number (Re) for each
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Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
Numerical results Difference [%]
2.21 −2.8
4.14 1.4
Height (mm) Base width (mm) Top width (mm)
5000 1680 1680
6000 2670 2130
5000 4650 4200
tower panel. In this analysis a uniform flow of wind speed (i.e., 𝑢) equal
to 50 m/s is used. A uniform flow assumption is adopted, similar to the
conditions often used in wind tunnel tests [2,32]. While for a correct
simulation of the structural behavior under strong wind it is essential
to capture the complexities and variations present in a real-world At-
mospheric Boundary Layer (ABL), for the sake of computing the wind
load coefficients these complexities are typically neglected. Indeed, our
study showed that these coefficients do not even depend on the wind
intensity, let alone the wind intensity variation along the height. Once
the coefficients are computed in this way, they can then be combined
with an appropriate wind load profile for finite element analysis, and
contribute to capturing the structural behavior. Table 5 shows that the
maximum absolute lateral coefficients are 0.344, 0.186, and 0.161 for
tower panels 2, 6, and 9, respectively. These values confirm that the lat-
eral coefficients are very small compared to the drag coefficients. The
sign of the lateral coefficients depends on the structure geometry and
wind attack angle. A similar conclusion was reached by previous stud-
ies [13,16,20]. The table indicates a small discrepancy between the drag
coefficient values computed for Ψ = 0° and Ψ = 120°. This little dis-
crepancy, in particular for panels 2 and 6 (i.e., −3.56 % and 2.12 %,
respectively) is due to the fact that the tower is not perfectly symmetric,
due to the orientation of the cross-section of the angle bracings. Such
small discrepancies are observed also in wind tunnel tests, and high-
light the sensitivity of the load coefficients to relatively minor details
[16,32]. Based on Table 5, the maximum drag forces and coefficients
for the tower panels are associated with Ψ = 0°, whereas the minimum
values are associated with wind directions ranging between Ψ = 30° and
Ψ = 45°. Moreover, as the tower bends under wind loads at Ψ = 0°, only
one leg takes the entire compressive force which is particularly trouble-
some for buckling, whereas two tower legs share the compressive force
for wind directions between Ψ = 30° to Ψ = 45° (see Fig. 10). Thus,
for wind in the direction Ψ = 0° two issues compound each other (i.e.,
largest drag wind force and only one leg taking all the compression).
This observation has important ramifications for tower installations as
towers benefit from placement in the position most likely to face strong
winds with Ψ = 30° to 45° based on the historical wind records at the
site.
The same procedure is applied to the microwave antenna, but using
different wind directions that account for the different symmetry (i.e.,
Ψm = 0° to 180° with an increment of 10°). In this analysis, the survival
wind speed (i.e., 𝑢 = 55.56 m/s) is used [40]. The wind velocity fields
resulting from the CFD analysis of the antenna for Ψm = 0° and 90°
are presented in Fig. 12. The surfaces exposed to wind (𝑆̃ ) used for
the calculation of the projected area for Ψm = 0°, 90°, and 180° are
highlighted in blue in Fig. 13.
Different inlet wind velocities are investigated for all models (i.e.,
the tower panels and the antenna). In this case, no significant differ-
ences are observed in the assessed drag coefficients. Researchers have
confirmed experimentally that the drag coefficients do not show any sig-
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
Fig. 7. A 3D model of a representative telecommunication tower and the examined panels (panels 2, 6, and 9).
nificant difference when various wind speeds are used, and they have
also proved that the drag coefficients are independent of the Reynolds
number, in particular when the Reynolds number is larger than 104
[2,13,16]. Fig. 14 shows that the Reynolds number for the antenna is
indeed larger than 104 . The computed drag forces, drag coefficients, and
projected areas for the antenna model under two inlet wind speeds (i.e.,
𝑢 = 55.56 m/s and 𝑢 = 30 m/s) as a function of the wind direction are
plotted in Fig. 15. Clearly, no changes are observed in the drag coeffi-
76
Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
cients and the projected areas when the mean wind speed changes, as
shown in Figs. 15(b) and (c), respectively.
The results are also compared to what would be obtained by us-
ing design standards to assess the wind loads. Design codes provide the
drag coefficient as a function of the solidity ratio and show that the
drag coefficients decrease as the solidity ratio increases. In this study,
the solidity ratio (𝜑) represents the ratio between the reference area and
the enclosed (i.e., solid) area of the tower face for Ψ = 0°. Since each
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Fig. 8. Cylindrical microwave dish antenna model.

Fig. 9. Mesh of the air block and the structure of a) tower body and b) microwave antenna.

side of the examined tower panel has the same solidity (i.e., same ge-
ometry configuration), it is expected that the drag coefficients be nearly
identical for rotations of 60°. A small difference is attributed to the dif-
ference in the orientation of horizontal and diagonal bracings. Fig. 16
shows that drag coefficients are almost identical for rotations of 60°,
and they decrease as the solidity ratio increases. Table 6 reports the
simulated drag forces applied to the tower panels and the values cal-
culated based on the telecommunication standard code [10]. Note that
this code provides values only for Ψ = 0°, 60°, and 90°. As expected, the
results show that the drag forces computed by the code are larger (i.e.,
conservative) than those computed by CFD or observed in wind tunnel
tests. Another interesting observation is that the standard code com-
putes the drag forces for Ψ = 60° and 90° by multiplying the drag forces
for Ψ = 0° by wind directional coefficients equal to 0.80 and 0.85 for
Ψ = 60°, and 90°, respectively. As a result, the drag force associated with
Ψ = 90° is larger than the drag force associated with Ψ = 60°. However,
the CFD results show that the drag forces for Ψ = 90° is lower than for
Ψ = 60°.
The CFD analyses were performed within a reasonable simulation
time using a high-performance Linux workstation with 128 GB of RAM
and 16 CPU cores plus 768 GPU cores. The average simulation time of
tower panel with dense mesh size was approximately 40 to 61 h for all
considered wind directions (i.e., nine CFD analyses, each taking 4 to 7
h).

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M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Fig. 10. Wind force components and tower position under three wind directions.

Fig. 11. Domain of analysis for a) tower panel 2, b) tower panel 6, and c) tower panel 9.

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M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Table 5
Drag and lateral forces and coefficients of the selected tower panels.

Wind angle (Ψ) 0° 15° 30° 45° 60° 75° 90° 105° 120°

Tower Panel 2 (𝐴𝑟 = 4.60 m , Re = 2.71×10 )

2 5

Drag force (𝐹𝐷 ) [kN] 14.818 13.727 12.200 13.022 13.630 13.556 13.120 14.883 15.349
Drag Coefficient (CD ) 2.104 1.949 1.732 1.849 1.935 1.925 1.863 2.113 2.179
Lateral force (𝐹𝐿 ) [kN] −1.141 −1.384 −1.125 −0.564 1.028 2.365 2.419 2195 1.130
Lateral Coefficient (CL ) −0.162 −0.197 −0.160 −0.080 0.146 0.336 0.344 0.312 0.160
Tower Panel 6 (𝐴𝑟 = 3.76 m2 , Re = 2.37×105 )
Drag force (𝐹𝐷 ) [kN] 8.938 8.642 7.919 8.306 8.542 8.422 8.034 8.540 8.857
Drag Coefficient (CD ) 1.553 1.501 1.375 1.443 1.484 1.463 1.395 1.483 1.520
Lateral force (𝐹𝐿 ) [kN] −0.550 −1.072 −1.067 −0.927 −0.272 0.527 0.345 0.122 −0.489
Lateral Coefficient (CL ) −0.096 −0.186 −0.185 −0.161 −0.047 0.092 0.060 0.021 −0.085
Tower Panel 9 (𝐴𝑟 = 2.05 m2 , Re = 2.13×105 )
Drag force (𝐹𝐷 ) [kN] 5.584 5.468 4.821 5.317 5.570 5.410 4.887 5.412 5.581
Drag Coefficient (CD ) 1.779 1.742 1.536 1.694 1.774 1.723 1.557 1.724 1.778
Lateral force (𝐹𝐿 ) [kN] −0.342 −0.451 −0.506 −0.360 0.128 0.135 0.122 −0.044 −0.315
Lateral Coefficient (CL ) −0.109 −0.144 −0.161 −0.115 0.041 0.043 0.039 −0.014 −0.100

Table 6
Drag forces based on CFD analysis and TIA standard code.

Wind angle (Ψ) Panel 2 Panel 6 Panel 9

Drag Forces [kN] Drag Forces [kN] Drag Forces [kN]

CFD model TIA standard CFD model TIA standard CFD model TIA standard

0° 14.818 16.096 8.938 10.842 5.584 6.492

60° 13.630 13.875 8.542 9.471 5.570 5.676
90° 13.120 14.430 8.034 9.814 4.887 5.880

Fig. 12. Top view of the velocity wind field on the microwave antenna a) at Ψ = 0° and b) at Ψ = 90°.

Fig. 13. Projected area of the microwave antenna for a given wind direction.

Fig. 14. Simulated cell Reynolds number based on the CFD model.

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M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

Fig. 15. CFD analysis of the microwave antenna under two mean wind speeds a) drag forces, b) drag coefficients, and c) projected areas.

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M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

6.2. Total wind loads considering tower-antenna interaction

In this analysis, it is assumed that a single cylindrical microwave an-

tenna is mounted on each tower panel, attached to one corner, as indi-
cated in Fig. 17 and often done in practice. Eq. (2) is used to account for
the tower-antenna interaction. It should be noted that Eq. (2) is based
on the convention that positive values of 𝜃𝑚 correspond to clock-wise
rotations, so in this example 𝜃𝑚 is 60° (or −300°). The interference fac-
tors for all three panels are presented in Fig. 18. It can be seen that the
maximum values of the interference factor are observed at Ψ = 150° and
Ψ = 330°, when there is no overlap between the tower and the antenna.
In this case, the microwave antenna accelerates the airflow over the
tower and increases the total drag forces. Instead, the minimum inter-
ference factors occur at Ψ = 60° and at Ψ = 240°, due to tower-antenna
shielding effects. The values of the interference factor show a substan-
tial variation with the wind direction. Thus, the interaction between the
tower and the microwave antenna has a significant effect on the calcu-
Fig. 16. Drag coefficients in wind directional axis of the tower panels.
lation of the total drag forces and it should not be ignored. In contrast,

Fig. 17. Position of the microwave antenna a) panel 2, b) panel 6, and c) panel 9.

Fig. 18. Interference factors as a function of wind direction of a single cylindrical microwave antenna added to a tower panel.

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M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al.
Fig. 19. Total drag forces of tower panel 6 and the microwave antenna.
the results show small sensitivity to the panel topology and solidity ra-
tio (the values for the three investigated panels are almost the same),
suggesting that these results can be a good approximation for a wide
ranges of panels and antennas with similar configurations. Then, the to-
tal wind loads for the three panels can be computed based on Eq. (7).
In Fig. 19, the wind loads for panel 6 are compared with those obtained
by linear superposition. The figure shows that the total drag forces com-
puted based on superposition are overestimated for Ψ = 30° to Ψ = 90°
and for Ψ = 210° to Ψ = 270° because they neglect the overlap (shielding
effects) between the tower and the antenna (i.e., fa < 1). With simple su-
perposition, a large overestimation occurs at Ψ = 60° when the antenna
completely blocks the airflow on the tower panel. In contrast, the forces
are underestimated for the remaining wind directions because they do
not account for the airflow acceleration when there is no overlap be-
tween the tower and the antenna (i.e., fa > 1).
It should also be noted that the microwave antenna orientation (i.e.,
𝜃𝑚 ) may change over the course of a hurricane event, which leads to dif-
ferent interference between the tower and the antenna. In this case, the
computation of the interference factor should be updated, and analysts
must make sure to take this point into consideration. These observations
are important in performing structural dynamic time history analyses
for damage and resilience assessments, reliability analysis and decision
making.
7. Conclusions
This paper presents an accessible computational protocol to deter-
mine wind load coefficients for telecommunication towers, including
the effect of the wind direction and the tower-antenna interaction. The
analyses show that the proposed protocol is robust, cost effective, and
yields a level of accuracy that is appropriate for practical applications
(error less than 5 % on the total loads). The protocol can be applied to
any tower-antenna configurations to estimate the wind load coefficients
and wind loads in a fast and easy way. It is calibrated and validated by
means of experimental results available in the literature. It is found out
that the mesh size, wall boundary conditions, relative location of the
tower inside the air block, and air block dimensions affect the results
significantly, and thus recommendations are provided to tune these pa-
rameters.
Triangular cross-section tower panels with different topology and so-
lidity ratios and a cylindrical microwave antenna are examined as illus-
trative examples. Maximum drag coefficients are obtained at Ψ = 0° (i.e.,
the design forces), while the minimum values are observed at Ψ = 30°
for all three tower panels. The results also show that drag coefficients
are almost identical for rotations of 60°, and they decrease as the solid-
ity ratio increases. For the microwave antenna, maximum drag coeffi-
cients are found at Ψm = 0° and minimum drag coefficients are noticed
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Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83
at Ψm = 90°. These observations can be useful for tower owners to al-
leviate tower damage when installing a new tower in a site, based on
historical strong wind records. The examined tower panels experience
very small lateral forces compared to the drag forces, which confirms
that the drag coefficients are the most important parameters in wind
load calculation.
The calculated drag forces are compared to those computed by a
standard code. As expected, the standard code overestimates the drag
forces and drag coefficients. What is more, the design code determines
that the minimum drag forces are at Ψ = 60°, while the protocol shows
that for the investigated examples the most favorable directions are
Ψ = 30° and 90°. Finally, the total drag forces on the tower and the an-
tenna computed by simple linear superposition, which is the approach
used in many engineering applications, are substantially inaccurate be-
cause they disregard the tower-antenna interaction, and may lead to an
erroneous overestimation of the tower safety.
The innovation of the presented protocol lies primarily in the devel-
opment of guidelines for systematic assessment of the load coefficients.
By means of the provided guidelines, the proposed approach will be ap-
plicable in practice to various problems that involve portfolio analysis,
regional resilience assessment, and catastrophe modeling. In fact, for all
these analyses it is essential to have accurate load parameters for a very
large number of wind-antenna configurations, which would otherwise
require an impractical number of wind tunnel tests. For these reasons,
the proposed approach is not meant to affect the design of an individual
tower, but it can have a transformative impact on the resilience assess-
ment of telecommunication infrastructure portfolios.
Relevance to Resilience
This article proposed a robust and straightforward numerical
simulation-based protocol for precisely estimating the wind load coef-
ficients and interference factor of telecommunication towers. These es-
timated parameters hold significant value for performing fragility and
reliability analyses, which are a building block of as resilience and risk
assessments.
Declaration of competing interests
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This research is part of the activities of the Catastrophe Modeling
Center at Lehigh University (www.catmodeling.org). The support from
M. Khazaali, L. Ma, K. Rokneddin et al. Resilient Cities and Structures 3 (2024) 66–83

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