Abstract:

This paper presents a monitoring method of tower sway amplitude for the security monitoring requirement of a large-scale short wave aerial antenna curtain tower. It employs a fiber grating strain sensor to determine the strain variation on the three stay cables of a tower and then calculates the sway amplitude at the top of the tower. An alarm will be generated when the sway amplitude is greater than the preset safe value. Field tests show that the method can accurately determine the sway amplitude of a tower with an approximate inclination error of 1/24 000. It is therefore sufficient for the requirement of tower safety pre-alarm, so it can replace the regular manual test methods.

Key words: antenna tower, fiber grating sensor, strain monitoring