The most common wind tower structure, a tapered tubular steel monopole, is currently limited to heights of ~80m due to transportation constraints which arise because tower sections are manufactured at centralized plants and transported to site for assembly. The need to transport the sections imposes a limit on their size, whereby maximum tower diameters are dictated by bridge clearances rather than by structural efficiency. New manufacturing innovations, based on automated spiral welding, may enable on-site production of wind towers, thereby precluding transportation limits and permitting the manufacture of taller towers, which can harvest the steadier, stronger winds at higher elevations. Taller towers, however, are expected to have crosssections with slenderness that is uncommon in structural engineering (i.e., diameter-to-thickness ratios up to ~500) and much larger than those of conventionally manufactured towers (i.e.,

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