Life-cycle cost structural design optimization of steel wind towers

The objective of this work is to propose a design procedure, formulated as a structural design optimization problem, for designing steel wind towers subject to constraints imposed by the Eurocode. For this purpose five test examples are considered, in particular steel wind towers varying on their height are optimally designed with minimum initial cost, while the wind load is calculated according to Eurocode 1 Part 2-4 and design constraints imposed by Eurocode 3 on shell buckling and local buckling of flat ring-stiffeners are implemented. Furthermore, two formulations are examined differing on the shape of the wind tower along the height. While, for the solution of the optimization problem the Optimization Computing Platform (OCP) was used.