Corrosion Grade on Anchor Rods of Guyed Transmission Towers Applying Machine Committee / Grau de Corrosão em Hastes de Âncora de Torres de Transmissão Guiadas Comitê de Aplicação de Máquinas

Abstract

The use of guyed structures in electric power transmission lines is a growing practice because of their cost efficiency. However, the anchor systems are subject to corrosion, which can lead to their rupture and loss of tower support. Monitoring the evolution of the corrosion of the anchor rods by visual inspection is a destructive and costly method; therefore, there is considerable interest in developing methods and tools that are capable of generating a maintenance diagnosis of the system. This work aimed to propose a classification tool for guyed towers in terms of the corrosion degree by a machine committee with neural networks and applied it to the Paraiso-Açu line located in Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. Thirty-eight samples were collected and 33 variables related to the soil corrosion along the line were analyzed. The targets for training the networks were obtained from the inspection of anchor rods taken from the field. A simplification of the problem's dimension was proposed by principal component analysis, describing the phenomenon with 6 variables instead of 33, simplifying the practical application by massively reducing the requirements for data sampling in the field. Several network typologies were trained and the best ones in terms of their generalist and specialist capacities were combined in a machine committee for the final proposal of this work. The classification obtained by the application of the committee for 10 towers was compared with the classification from non-destructive impulse reflectometry tests and showed an 80% correlation