Stability and Reinforcement Analysis of Superlarge Exhaust Cooling Towers Based on a Wind Tunnel Test
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 12
Abstract
The rigid pressure measurement and aero–elastic vibration measurement were performed to the largest exhaust cooling tower in Asia. Through analyses, the surface wind pressure distribution, multitower proportional coefficient, and wind-induced vibration coefficient of the exhaust cooling towers from the most unfavorable wind direction were obtained. On this basis, finite-element software and self-made repreprocessing and postprocessing programs were employed to analyze the ultimate load-carrying capacity and overall and local stabilities of exhaust cooling tower in three conditions, which include (1) no opening, (2) opening without strengthening, and (3) opening with different strengthening schemes, then the ultimate load-carrying capacity of exhaust cooling tower during construction under different load combinations was also analyzed. For cooling tower with opening, obvious stress aggregation was found near the opening, and the minimum safety factor for local stability of the tower throat area was 4.27. An effective strengthening scheme was proposed for such problem, e.g., the stress aggregation and local instability near the opening were effectively eliminated, and the critical wind speed for overall destabilization of exhaust cooling tower was increased. During the construction of exhaust cooling tower, as the constructed height increases, the critical wind speed for overall destabilization gradually decreases. When 100 template layers are constructed, the critical wind speed is , which is much higher than the designed wind speed of ; and when the most unfavorable wind speed for destabilization was applied as regulated wind pressure, the wind speed for overall buckling destabilization is . With the consideration of internal suction, the critical wind speed for destabilization decreases by about 30%. In this paper, some useful conclusions can be used for reference in wind-resistant design of superlarge exhaust cooling towers.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported in this paper was jointly supported by National Natural Science Foundation (51208254 and 51021140005), Jiangsu Province Natural Science Foundation (BK2012390), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2013M530255), which are gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 12 • December 2015
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 24, 2014
Accepted: Feb 18, 2015
Published online: May 6, 2015
Discussion open until: Oct 6, 2015
Published in print: Dec 1, 2015
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