Modelling and simulation of power lines made of composite structures

The paper presents our new Functionally Graded Material (FGM) beam finite element that can be used for elastic-static, modal and buckling analysis of single beams or spatial beam structures. The material properties in a real beam can vary continuously in the longitudinal direction, while the variation with respect the transversal and lateral directions is assumed to be symmetric in a continuous or discontinuous manner (Murín et al., 2016). An application to elastostatic and modal analysis of high-voltage lines (single, double and triple bounded) with heterogeneous cross-sections is presented. The heterogeneous material properties of the cross-section are homogenized using the extended mixture rules. A linearized elastostatic analysis of power lines with the effect of tensile axial forces is proposed. Further, the axial, flexural and torsional eigenfrequencies and eigenmodes are calculated. The corresponding results of simple and bundle power lines obtained by our proposed finite element are compared with the ones obtained with standard beam finite elements. Further, the accuracy and efficiency of our proposed beam finite element is evaluated and studied. The results of the chosen analyzed case are verified by measurements on real electric conductor.