Standard lighting poles are designed to meet 90 MPH wind speed requirement without surpassing a specific deflection at the pole tip.
These tests can only be performed experimentally in specific windtunnels not available in most countries. Therefore; companies go to accurate simulations using software as Ansys to verify these standards are met.
FSI or fluid structure interaction is used in this case which involves two solvers the Fluid solver (Fluent in this case) and Static structure solver , where the stresses evaluated from the flow of the air is passed to the static structure solver to evaluate the total deflection of the pole. This process requires great computing resources and the solution is solvcd more than once to verify the grid convergence and accuracy of the final solution. The lighting pole did not meet the reqirements of maximm deflection and the company had to redesign the structure.
