Influence of natural draught cooling tower shell geometry on structural behavior

Abstract

The purpose of the study is the investigation of the influences of the geometric parameters of the cooling tower shell on the structural behavior. The results may be informative for the form-finding of the cooling tower shell. The geometric parameters - height of throat, angle of base lintel and radius of top lintel - were analysed in detail. As a result, a hyperbolic rotational shell with the small radius over all will yield the shell geometry with a higher first natural frequency and thus a wind-insensitive structure. This can be reached by describing the shell geometry with two hyperbolic equations. The radius of the lower shell can be minimized with a maximum angle of the base lintel and a minimum height of the throat, while the whole upper shell takes the minimum radius, almost like a cylinder shell.