In our 45+ years of building, installing and maintaining towers sites around the world to date, we have not had the experience of a single ROHN structure suffering from internal corrosion, starting from the inside out, and causing a structural failure. An ideal example of this is a ROHN supplied tower, installed and serviced by us on the Jeddah coast in Saudi Arabia. The tower supplied in 1987, was installed by Rohn Products International on the seashore, downwind from a de-salinization plant and serviced for the past twenty six years by us. We were able to observe and monitor the effects of the environment and corrosion on the tower firsthand at this site. In 2008 under a routine service, we determined the upper 30M, or 100 feet of the main tubular legs and angle braces required replacement as a result of corrosion, which was more severe at the top portion of the structure.
Twenty six years after the tower was installed, the replaced tubular legs were cut open for inspection and evaluation by our engineering team. The findings were as expected. Even with proper galvanizing, the galvanized surfaces are sacrificed to the elements over time, however; this was done from the outside in and not from the inside out. Logic would suggest the exposed exterior surface of the tube physically protects the interior galvanized surface of the tubes. Tubular member towers have no shorter life span than any other type of steel member.
The long standing miss-conception of tubular towers corroding from the inside towards the outside is partially due to the continued application of concepts generated from old angle tower technology. It is our conclusion that a tubular structure that meets modern manufacturing and quality standards is a much more competitive and viable structure, or solution to that of the older angle tower technology of the past. If these tubular structures were so inherently faulty, ROHN would have ceased to exist from the number of lawsuits generated by this type of liability.
If you are considering a choice between angle and pipe, you have much more flexibility in the design, efficiency and economy when using the modern shapes available today with tubular structures when compared to angle. Among many reasons for this, there is much more flexibility with tubular structures due to the much wider availability of sizes, strengths and densities when compared to angular structures.
ROHN is considered to be one of the world standards for telecommunications, broadcast, utility, lighting, transportation and signage solutions. Rest assured if you choose Rohn Products International the full benefit of our years of experience, materials selection, design and installation methods are proven and time tested world wide.
