Advances of composite cross arms with incorporation of material core structures: Manufacturability, recent progress and views

The existing cross arms in high transmission towers are made of pultruded glass fibre reinforced polymer composite (PGFRPC). The moisture, temperature change in the atmosphere, and other environmental factors affect the performance of these members and cause a complete failure. It is apparent that any material used in such applications is susceptible to attack from environmental factors. Therefore, a feasible solution for this issue is to enhance the PGFRPC with a composite-filled sandwich structure as an alternative that could sustain longer than the existing cross arms due to its superior performance under bending and compressive loads. This paper presents a case study on experimental and analytical mechanical performance of both PGFRPCs and composite filled sandwich structure. In this review, the composite-filled sandwich structure is proposed as an alternative to the conventional PGFRPC. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper presents a case study on enhancing the mechanical performance of high transmission towers cross arms by using composite-filled sandwich structure as an alternative to the conventional PGFRPC. The study suggests that the composite-filled sandwich structure could sustain longer and perform better under bending and compressive loads.