George Vander Voort of Vander Voort Consulting, presented a discussion of a tower design that ignored dynamic stresses, leading to the collapse of a radio tower. The U.S. Coast Guard LORAN C tower had been built on an island off the coast of Greenland. The 1350-foot-tall tower collapsed 289 days after erection. One guy wire broke and the tower collapsed, indicating a poor, non-redundant design.
The longer guy wires were broken up using insulators in the cables. The porcelain insulators had no strength in tension, so they had to be loaded in compression by using a pin through the porcelain. One pin broke because it was misaligned, and fatigue caused it to break.
Another issue was that the tower design considered only static stresses, ignoring dynamic stresses. Twice a watchman noticed the guy wire oscillating in a sinusoidal manner, and he recorded the day and time because this seemed to him to be very odd behavior.
Title: Failure Analysis of a LORAN C Tower near Greenland
Author: George Vander Voort; Vander Voort Consulting L.L.C.
https://www.matscitech.org/MST19/TechnicalProgram
