Relocatable Tower Base Plate With Adjustable Legs
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional tower designs are costly and require heavy equipment for deployment, often involving ground penetration and are not suitable for applications requiring high stiffness and rapid relocation, especially in windy conditions and sensitive imaging applications.
Innovation Solution
A relocatable tower system with a ballast-agnostic base that allows for rapid deployment and high stiffness, using a base plate with adjustable legs and ballast adaptors that can connect to various ballast types, eliminating the need for heavy machinery and ground penetration, and featuring a kingpost truss and adjustable couplings for enhanced stability and leveling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stability of the object's composition
If conventional tower designs use concrete foundations and heavy machinery for deployment, then structural stability is improved, but deployment cost and complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The tower system is divided into separate modular components: a base assembly with ballast, a vertical mast, and connection elements. This segmentation allows each component to be manufactured, transported, and deployed independently, eliminating the need for heavy machinery and complex ground preparation while maintaining structural stability through precise modular connections.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention uses ballast weights positioned at the base to counteract toppling moments and provide structural stability without requiring ground penetration or concrete foundations. The ballast acts as a counterweight that anchors the tower through mass rather than mechanical attachment to the ground, enabling rapid deployment with minimal equipment.
2Reliability
If tower designs allow sway for survivability in wind gusts, then structural resilience is improved, but stability for sensitive equipment mounting deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The tower structure implements different structural characteristics at different locations: the base assembly is designed with high mass and low center of gravity for stability, while the vertical mast is optimized for minimal sway. The connection between base and mast is designed to transfer loads efficiently, creating a system where the base provides anchoring stability and the mast provides vertical rigidity, achieving both resilience and precision at the tower top.
3Stability of the object's composition
If heavy equipment is used for tower erection, then structural stability is improved, but deployment speed and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The ballast weights are positioned and the base assembly is prepared in advance at the deployment site before the tower mast is erected. This preliminary action allows the stabilizing foundation to be in place before the vertical structure is installed, enabling rapid assembly with minimal equipment. The ballast-agnostic design further accelerates deployment by allowing flexible use of available weights without requiring precise pre-positioning.
Solution Approach 2:
The tower base assembly is designed to be self-stabilizing through its ballast configuration, eliminating the need for external heavy equipment during erection. The structure uses its own mass and geometry to provide stability, allowing small teams to erect the tower using only basic hand tools and portable equipment, dramatically increasing deployment speed and reducing costs.
4Stability of the object's composition
If ground penetration is used for tower installation, then structural anchoring is improved, but environmental impact and deployment complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The invention replaces ground penetration anchoring with ballast-based counterweight anchoring. Instead of driving piles or pouring concrete into the ground, the tower uses heavy weights positioned at the base to create a stable, non-penetrating foundation. This approach provides sufficient anchoring for most applications while avoiding environmental disruption, making the system suitable for sensitive locations and rapid deployment scenarios.
Data Source
AI summary
Presented herein are systems, methods, and apparatus related to relocatable tower technologies that facilitate on-site deployment and provide improved stiffness in order to minimize motion at a tower top in a manner that existing approaches, which focus on survivability, do not contemplate. In particular, relocatable tower technologies described herein can be deployed rapidly and at low cost, at outdoor sites, to, e.g., provide a vertical mast upon which equipment can be mounted. In certain embodiments, features of relocatable towers described herein allow the vertical mast to survive and remain rigid while being exposed to outdoor elements, such as wind gusts (e.g., up to 110 Mph). Advantages of relocatable tower technologies described herein are particularly well suited where (e.g., scanning based) imaging and/or detection equipment is mounted at a top of the tower, and/or where towers are deployed at sensitive sites such as hydrocarbon production, storage and processing facilities.