Natural draft steel hyperbolic cooling towers: Optimization and performance evaluation

Abstract

SUMMARY Demand for efficient and economical hyperbolic cooling towers has driven engineers toward designing tall and lightweight towers, specially, in regions with high‐seismic ground motions. An effective way to achieve this goal is using steel cooling towers. Also, by using tubular diagonal grid (Diagrid) system as the structural system, the weight of cooling tower will reduce, significantly. Therefore, in this investigation, a steel hyperbolic cooling tower is modeled with Diagrid system. A linear analysis, under dead and wind load, is performed on several systems with different angles of Diagrids to reach the optimal angle of grids. Furthermore, the effect of stiffening rings on the cooling tower is examined, and it is observed that the use of stiffening rings makes the tower lighter. And, by performing nonlinear time history and stability analyses, the behavior of the cooling tower is investigated under strong earthquakes, and it is represented that the system shows very good performance during strong earthquakes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Nonlinear stability analysis of steel cooling towers considering imperfection sensitivity

“…At present, most of the cooling towers are still reinforced concrete structures and they have several shortcomings, such as excessive self-weight and poor seismic resistance [13]. With advantages such as light-weight structure, small air resistance together with simple and quick construction, steel reticulated shell has been more and more popular in structural design of cooling tower [14].…”

“…Later, Saeed conducted numerical simulation of the dynamic response, stability and collapse of the tower [16]. In the 21st century, more studies have been conducted, proving the feasibility of steel cooling towers [13,[17][18][19][20]. Several studies have been conducted to aid the design and construction of steel cooling towers.…”

“…A comparative study of different structure schemes, including hyperbolic single-layer latticed shell, cylinder-cone latticed shell and frame-hyperbolic latticed shell, has been conducted by Liu et al [19]. The effect of angle of tubular diagonal grids on the performance of a cooling tower has been investigated by Izadi and Bargi [13]. With respect to the construction mothed, Song [20] simulated the whole construction process of a large-scale steel cooling tower using the step-by-step jacking method.…”

Load resistance and hysteretic response of rhombic grid hyperboloid‐latticed shell subjected to combined vertical and horizontal loads

“…Steel latticed shells have been gradually adopted in the cooling towers. Typical structural forms of the current cooling towers are the hyperboloid latticed shells with triangular grids …”

Non‐Gaussian characteristics and extreme distribution of fluctuating wind pressures on large cylindrical–conical steel cooling towers

“…For the sake of convenient construction and assembly and cooling process, SCTs usually take the cylindrical–conical configuration, which can lead to smaller dead weight and damping, higher flexibility, and lower natural frequency as compared with hyperbolic reinforced concrete cooling towers. However, SCTs are sensitive to wind loads . Cylindrical–conical SCTs are associated with a complex fluctuating wind pressure distribution pattern and a very different wind‐induced vibration effect.…”