Layout optimization of transmission line family structures

Due to topography conditions, transmission line towers (TLTs) with different heights are required to the same transmission line. To ease industrial production, the supports are designed in components such as basic body, body extensions, and legs. This modulation is the so-called structure family, which leads to a cost-effective global procedure. Nevertheless, a comprehensive literature survey reveals that the TLTs optimization studies carried out hitherto have been focused only on the tallest structure using linear analysis. Hence, the procedure proposed by de Souza et al. (Eng Struct 111:162–184, 2016) is expanded, and general rules for template creation are proposed to the entire set of the support components, such as inclined tower body, tower top, body extensions, and legs. Then, because of the very high computational time required for the layout optimization of TLTs families, this article proposes a master-slave-based procedure for this purpose. It ensures weight reductions while saving substantial processing time. Moreover, a geometric nonlinear analysis is called in the final solution to minor corrections in some elements, mainly due to the slender structures determined in the optimization. The scheme is performed on an actual tower family, showing that it can reduce up to 7% of the global family mass compared to the original design’s size optimization.