NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION ON PERFORMANCE OF SUPER LARGE COOLING TOWERS UNDER EQUIVALENT STATIC WIND LOAD

According to the pressure data obtained from a group of super large cooling towers, the equivalent static wind load is modeled with associated parameters: surface extreme value pressure distribution formulations, tower group factors; wind-vibration factors, etc. With the help of FEM numerical simulation method, the performance of cooling towers in terms of stress, displacement and local elastic stability due to aerodynamic loads are examined. Accounting for material and geometrical non-linearity of cooling tower, the ultimate bearing capacity under static wind load is also investigated. In this paper, more efforts are focused on some key parameters, i.e., internal pressure, distribution mode about external pressure, boundary effect, wind profile index and group tower effect.