In the present work, introduced is a software (AutoTorre 1.01) to design steel telecommunication towers using hollow sections. The main purpose of the software is to help and assist the engineer in the process of analyzing and designing a steel tower. The software uses Brazilian specifications to compute wind loads and design beams. The calculation of wind loads, structure efforts and beam design is mechanical work that has now been automated and thus saves time for the engineer and allows for focus on other important aspects. Software routines allow the user to generate automatically the tower geometry, compute wind load and design the beams. Another functionality consists in a modal analysis to obtain the fundamental period of vibration. The software has a friendly graphical user interface. Wind load results according to two methods (static and dynamic methods) proposed by the NBR6123 are compared, to obtain a safe and economic structure.
Steel structure; computer-aided design; hollow sections
