The IUP Journal of Structural Engineering
Response of Cooling Tower Shell to Wind Loads

Article Details
Pub. Date : Apr, 2023
Product Name : The IUP Journal of Structural Engineering
Product Type : Article
Product Code : IJSE010423
Author Name : Sachin R Kulkarni and Vinod Hosur
Availability : YES
Subject/Domain : Science and Technology
Download Format : PDF Format
No. of Pages : 19

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Abstract

The paper aims at studying the structural response of cooling tower shell under wind loading. The calculated wind pressure is applied on a cooling tower at different heights and circumferential angles. The analysis is carried out for different shell thicknesses using FEA, and the response of cooling tower shell is observed in terms of deflection, hoop and meridional forces at 0° meridian. The circumferential pressure distribution given in IS 11504: 1985 code is expressed as Fourier cosine series in the present study, and the calculation is carried out for 15° interval and compared with the coefficients obtained from IS 875 (Part 3): 1987. It is observed that the deflection of cooling tower shell decreases, whereas the hoop and meridional forces increase with increase in shell thickness. The hoop and meridional forces are not much affected above throat level for different shell thicknesses.


Introduction

Cooling towers built for industrial purposes are among the largest shell structures constructed in the form of hyperbolic shells of revolution. Considerable research is available in literature on analysis of cooling towers for wind loading. Hashish and Abu-Sitta (1972) studied ring stiffened cooling towers under static wind loading considering two towers: one with constant thickness and other with variable thickness. They observed that effect of ring beam is local and mainly influences the meridional moment and circumferential force, and observed that crack in concrete occurs because of reversal of stress due to ring beam. Reed et al. (1983) performed time series analysis of cooling tower subjected to wind loading. They studied full-scale wind velocity and wind pressure time series data on two cooling towers. Time series data modeled by ARIMA is characterized by collection of set of wind velocities and wind pressure differences around circumference of the tower. Gupta and Maestrini (1986) investigated the ultimate behavior of cooling tower. They observed that significant redistribution of meridional stresses occurs after yielding of reinforcement, thus increasing the ultimate strength beyond the predicted value. They showed that


Keywords

Circumferential angle, Hoop forces, Meridional forces, Wind pressure