Identification of damping ratio and its influences on wind‐ and earthquake‐induced effects for large cooling towers

Abstract

Summary Standard 5% damping ratio for high‐rise concrete structures is generally used for dynamic analysis under the action of wind and earthquakes in the existing cooling tower regulations and researches. But considering the unique configuration and material attributes of large cooling towers, the actual damping ratio must be far smaller than the recommended. However, only a few field measurements of damping ratio for large cooling towers have been conducted; neither are there thorough investigation into the qualitative and quantification of wind and seismic effects under different damping ratio. To fill this gap, field measurements of a large cooling tower standing 179 m in northwestern China was performed and acceleration vibration signals at representative positions of the tower under ambient excitation were obtained. The vibration signals were preprocessed combining random decrement technique and natural excitation technique. Three pattern recognition methods (auto‐regressive and moving mean model, Ibrahim time domain, and spare time domain (STD)) were applied to analyze the frequencies, damping ratios, and modes of vibration for the first 10 order modes. Following the line of thought of modal combination, the equivalent synthetic damping ratio was derived. Under 5 damping ratios (0.5%, 1%, 2%, 3%, and 5%), a comparative analysis on the dynamic responses of the cooling tower to wind and single seismic loading by using full transient method was performed. On this basis, the patterns of influence of damping ratio on wind‐induced vibration, wind vibration coefficient, and time history and extrema of seismic responses were extracted. Finally, different combinations of dead weight, wind, temperature in winter, sunshine duration, and seismic intensity and those of accidental seismic effects (8 working conditions) were considered, using equivalent synthetic damping ratio and standard damping ratio. Thus, the most unfavorable working conditions were identified under actual and standard damping ratios for the large cooling tower. Our research findings provide reference for determining the value of damping ratio in large cooling towers and deepening the understanding on the influence mechanism of damping ratio.

Wind-Induced Vibration Analysis of a Pentagonal Three–Four Strut Hybrid Open-Type Cable Dome

“…However, field measurements of the damping ratio in cable dome structures are rare. Investigating the mechanism by which the damping ratio affects the wind vibration coefficient is important for establishing the most unfavorable conditions for cable dome structures [30,31]. The results of the analysis illustrating the influence of the damping factor on the structural wind vibration coefficients are shown in Figure 13a When the other parameters remain constant, larger damping coefficients lead to a reduction in both the displacement and internal force wind vibration coefficients.…”