Boring

[MontyVeda]

Recently a competition has been run to design a new style of pylon. some of the entrants have been excellent and a selection can be seen on the Beeb, here.


Now they've picked the winner and bearing in mindm there is no intention to actually start using the winning design, I'd have expected them to choose something a little more adventurous than this...

 

[colly]

I thought the Flower Tower was the most elegant. The winner is kind of utilitarian.

 

[cd365]

I too preferred the flower tower

 

[Fnaar]

The V-shaped one (image 6 on the beeb link) seems the most practical to me... not nec the most beautiful though.
All the kerfuffle about wind farms etc, were not pylons an eyesore when first introduced? Seems to me we'll get as used to modern 'windmills' as we have done to pylons.

 

[dellzeqq]

the winning design is really dull. If that's teh best we can do, then we should stick to the steel lattice that's been going strong for a century and more.

 

[Beebo]

the winning design is really dull.

It is also looks cheaper to manufacture compared to the others. Which has got to be a major factor in chosing that design.

 

[Zoiders]

It looks like that once it gets damaged, it gets pulled over or rots out you can't fix it and you have to replace the entire pylon which defeats the object of it being cheap to manufacture.

It's a major fail, stick with old fashioned, modular, bolted together steel angle please when putting infrastructure in place.

 

[dellzeqq]

It is also looks cheaper to manufacture compared to the others. Which has got to be a major factor in chosing that design.

I can't agree - it looks very expensive indeed. Resisting all the loads through one member means that you lose the stiffness afforded by the triangulation in the 'old-fahioned' design - and, hence, you use more steel. You'd need one heck of a base to resist the turning moment, and the 'old-fashioned' pylon would have four bases which would be mostly about resisting uplift. Transporting a one-piece pylon has got to be much more expensive than transporting a pylon in bits.

I can just about see it working with post-tensioned concrete, but, again, the transportation would be eye-watering, and eventual demolition would be....interesting

 

[ohnovino]

Shame there wasn't a design with a small wind turbine on it. If there aren't technological hurdles, I'd have thought a small windmill on every pylon in the country would generate quite a bit of energy without causing additional "eyesores".

 

[Zoiders]

It's going to need about of a third of it's total length buried in the earth and one hell of a concrete tap and plug base to keep it steady.

While this design might work with concrete cantilever construction buildings it's utterly crap for something that needs to be transportable.

 

[Milo]

I must say I rather liked it, though it is not hard to improve upon the current (boom tish) look.

 

[TVC]

Access, serviceability? Also, not sure they will have stress tested the design, the cross beam with such a narrow depth isn't going to take the weight of those fully iced cables. Sorry to be a practical engineer about this, but those fancy-pants designers can draw what they like, it doesn't mean it will work.

 

[Archie_tect]

The T shape with the hanging 'diamonds' carrying the cables will have incredible turning moments at every node junction never mind the stresses and overturning moments at the bolted base on what will need to be a massive foundation in weak or unstable ground across bogs/ moorland/ friable rock/ as Dell, Zolders and TVC have already said causing the rigid joints to become prematurely fatigued under wind/ ice load. Stainless steel would cost a fortune. Replacement and maintenance alone would be a nightmare.

One piece manufacture and delivery for a 20m high T shaped structure exceeds the max length permitted on UK roads without police escort for each one on a heavy low-loader requiring rolling road blocks.... and how do you lift one into place and get them into remote locations ... doubt even a Chinnook helicopter's big enough to lift one of them. [I wouldn't mind if it was elegant!]

 

[TheDoctor]

It's terrible!! The pylons we already use - modular construction, huge footprint and a shoot-load of triangles forming the spaceframe are a perfect example of form following function.

 

[mickle]

I like the one shaped like a lady.