Structural Health Monitoring-Oriented Finite-Element Model for a Large Transmission Tower

To obtain accurate finite-element (FE) models for structural health monitoring (SHM), effective modeling techniques are essential. This paper presents the process for establishing a 131-m large transmission tower’s SHM-oriented FE model. Incorporated procedures are appropriate modeling, manual tuning, model updating, and model validation. Through these works, a detailed realistic model that can reproduce all the experimental dynamic characteristics is obtained, and important conclusions about establishing SHM-oriented FE models for large steel pylon structures can be drawn accordingly: (1) it is necessary to model all the bar members using beam or truss elements of equivalent cross sections for local structural behavior exploration; (2) some components (e.g., ladders, steel plates, and rivets) are no influence on the structural overall stiffness, but their contributions to mass cannot be ignored in modeling; (3) the response surface (RS)-based FE model updating method is effective for complicated pylon models; (4) manual tunings are needed to ensure the quality of model updating.