Avaliação do comportamento estrutural de subestações de energia elétrica com o uso do aço inoxidável.

Abstract

The increasing use of stainless steel as a structural element motivated, in recent years, the continuous interest of customers, architects and engineers. Despite its high cost, its application in construction have been replacing other structural elements. This is mainly due to its high corrosion resistance that increases its cost-effective ratio, its aesthetic that enables the construction of increasingly bold forms and its environmental appeal that generates less environmental waste. The electric power substations represent an important role in the global energy supply. Since its maintenance is a complex and costly process, one of its bus support structure was chosen to be designed in stainless steel. This strategy minimizes the number of stoppages for structural maintenance, enabling a higher quality power supply. For comparative purposes an existing power substation has been chosen where the bus supporting structure was made of galvanized carbon steel angle bar trusses. Initially, the design adopted I and H profiles functioning as beam-column for the two types of steel analyzed. In a second stage, the structure was designed as a plane truss. All designs were performed in accordance to the requirements of EUROCODE 3 standard. This was followed by comparative analyses of the costs involved for the studied steel types. These analyses involved the initial investment assessment properly contextualized with the posterior spending on maintenance and electrical costs of the stoppages and were set against the gains in reducing the downtime for maintenance of the stainless steel solution.