What?s the significance of the bolted joints? Why did you add them to the 80m tower?

[Julia Austin]

The bolted joints add significant axial compression strength to the tower joint. Based on our experience, the most frequent cause of tower failure is due to excessive tower ice loading.  In an icing event, the weight of accumulated ice on upper levels of the tower increases loads on lower level tubes.  At a certain level of force, tubes will ?self flare,? meaning the tubes literally compress onto one another.  This compression results in a shorter tower which lessens guy wire tension. The tower guy wires ?sag? and the structural strength of the tower is compromised from improperly tensioned guy wires. At this point tower failure becomes more probable. The bolted joints minimize the risk of this happening. They also make for a more rigid, easier-to-manage tower during installation.