Ultimate torsional moment of dry horizontal joint for prefabricated concrete tower

Summary More and more prefabricated steel–concrete hybrid wind turbine towers have been built because of their better lateral stiffness than those of the full steel towers, in which epoxy resin joints are commonly adopted at the horizontal joint between two ring units for improving the erection speed. In fact, epoxy resin joints are designed in the same way as dry joints due to the very thin thickness of epoxy resin layer, in which epoxy resin only acts as a leveling blanket and sealer for jointing and compensates for the unevenness of the contact surface between two ring units. The current design method for the resistance to torsional moment at the horizontal joint is not reasonable because of the unreasonable assumption of Saint‐Venant's torsional theory. The integral expressions of the ultimate torsional moment at the horizontal joint with and without shear force are derived, respectively. The solution of the integral expressions for the ultimate torsional moment is realized by Python programming. The refined finite element analyses of two cases are compared with the existing small‐scale tests with segmental aluminum tubes, which verifies the calculation accuracy of the proposed integral method. In the modified integral model of the ultimate torsional moment, a correction term of the resistance to torsional moment and a more suitable distribution of shear stress under the action of horizontal shear force are proposed to obtain a more accurate ultimate torsional moment. Finally, 36 sets of cases with typical dimensions and axial forces in practical engineering are analyzed by the proposed integral model in the absence of horizontal shear force. One six‐parameter model for calculating the ultimate torsional moment is fitted by the least square method. A discount factor is proposed to consider the influence of the horizontal shear force on the ultimate torsional moment.