Wind masts are used to monitor wind speeds and directions at heights much above the ground. These are therefore tall, slender steel structures with heights ranging from 50m to 150m. As these are temporary structures used to gather meteorological data, it is important to keep the costs of these structures at a minimum.

For this reason, wind masts are not designed as self supported lattice structures (unlike telecom towers or radio towers which have a much wider base at the bottom). Fabrication and erection cost for self supported lattice towers for a height of 50 or 100m is very high.

Wind masts are instead designed as guyed towers. The main tower is a very slender and in most cases the section is of uniform width throughout the height of the structure. This slender tower is supported using multiple guy wires on all four sides of the tower. These guy wires are connected at different levels along the height of the tower to give it stability.

Wind mast design is based on a non linear, large deflection analysis. Several iterations are performed to obtain the optimized section sizes for the mast and the diameter of guy wires. Wind mast design is a specialized service which very few consulting firms are able to offer. Our team at Capstone has mastered the design of optimized wind masts and have completed design of masts for different companies for use in India as well as for export.