Cylindrical steel shell sections have been applied in various engineering fields particularly in recent installations of wind turbine towers. Hence, many researchers are interested in studying cylindrical steel shell structures. However, studies on the effect of the presence or absence of openings are insufficient. Thus, the design criteria for the opening as well as the behavior of wind turbine tower are not clearly presented. Therefore, this study examines the ultimate strength and the behavior of wind tower in consideration of openings, presence of stiffeners, changes in opening width, and thickness variation of stiffeners. ABAQUS, a universal finite element analysis program, was used in to conduct this research. Finally, the results of this study can be a reference for the design and production of wind towers with openings.

As the size of the wind power becomes larger, the development of the assembly type wind power which is advantageous in transportation and installation is active. This advantage comes from the economic point of view, and the stiffener is applied to the inner side, so that the safety is high. Large wind power require door openings for maintenance. The door opening has an irregular cross-section, and an excessive stress active due to the door opening. In this paper, the stresses occurring around the door opening was analyzed. As a result, small stress values were appeared in the tower, as the number of stiffeners were increased. Also, stress values were decreased a little in the tower as the opening shape become to ellipse was closer.