ORIGINAL PAPER Assessment of wood utility poles’ deterioration through natural frequency measurements Laura V. Gonza ´lez de Paz 1,2 • Ne ´ stor F. Ortega 1,2 • Marta B. Rosales 1,3 Received: 28 April 2018 / Accepted: 1 November 2018 Ó Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Utility poles in a power distribution line are usually made of prestressed concrete, reinforced concrete or wood. In Latin America, given the abundance of different species of wood suitable for structural purposes, the latter material is more commonly used. The durability of wood in structures exposed to meteorological agents is usually an issue, especially when these have a critical role in the operation of industries or when the structures provide a service to society. For this reason, it is convenient to develop simple techniques that allow the assessment of the damage during their service life. In this paper, results obtained experimentally are contrasted with the outcomes of finite element models, taking deterministic property values of the material and simulating the same load state of the test. The correlation between the degree deterioration of wood poles and their dynamic behavior taking into account defects such as cracks, knots and others, was evaluated. The wood used in the experiments is Eucalyptus grandis, a species that is widely cultivated in South and Central America and particularly, found in the northeastern part of Argentina. The experimental work has been carried out in laboratory using real poles with different degrees of damage and deterioration, that were provided by the EDES, the electricity company that provides service in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Keywords Wood poles  Wood damage  FEM  Experimental mechanics  Structural dynamics 1 Introduction Utility poles made of timber are widely used all over the world because they are of relatively low cost and envi- ronmentally friendy. Apart from being a renewable resource, round wood also gives a very good ecological balance, because sawing is not needed and the use of pri- mary energy is minimized. Consequently, the use of this type of structures is also convenient for taking care of environmental aspects. Eucalyptus grandis is a wood mainly cultivated in the Mesopotamian provinces of Entre Rı ´os and Corrientes, Argentina, and it is one of the most important renewable species cultivated in South America. It is extensively used in Argentina for structural purposes, in particular, utility poles. Some standards indicate the procedures to determine the mechanical properties of wood [1] and [2], and particularly of wood poles [3]. Nevertheless, the deterioration, both natural and generated by environmental agents, has a direct effect on the rigidity and strength of these structural ele- ments, and the values result in being different from those initially considered in the design. Experimental studies are usually carried out to assess its properties and behavior [4] and more recently, computa- tional approaches are reported in [5] and [6]. An experi- mental assessment of Eucalyptus grandis wood poles’ mechanic properties and the knots’ presence in the wood is present in [7]. & Laura V. Gonza ´lez de Paz lv.gdepaz@gmail.com Ne ´stor F. Ortega nfortega@criba.edu.ar Marta B. Rosales mrosales@criba.edu.ar 1 Department of Engineering, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Av. Alem 1253, Bahı ´a Blanca, Argentina 2 Instituto de Ingenierı ´a, UNS-CIC (Buenos Aires), Bahı ´a Blanca, Argentina 3 IFISUR, UNS-CONICET, Bahı ´a Blanca, Argentina 123 Journal of Civil Structural Health Monitoring https://doi.org/10.1007/s13349-018-0314-3