Theoretical and Testing Investigation of Wind-induced Performance of Super-large Cooling Tower

Hyperbolic thin-shell cooling towers have complicated vibration modes, and are very sensitive to the effects of group towers and wind-induced vibration. The aero-elastic models of cooling tower in wind tunnel tests are usually designed basing on the method of stiffness simulation by continuous material structure. However, the method has some shortages in actual engineering application, so the so-called “equivalent beam-net design method” of aero-elastic model of cooling tower is proposed in this paper. Reduced-scale stiffness algorithm of cooling tower model is formulated firstly, and corresponding modification and simulation methods about aerodynamic effects of Reynolds and Strouhal number are also suggested. An aero-elastic model of 1:200 ratio of cooling tower was manufactured using beam-net method, then in Tongji university TJ-3 wind tunnel, dynamic response tests were carried out. It can be confirmed that vibration modes and aerodynamic parameters, wind-vibration factors and testing feasibility meet the requirement of wind tunnel tests, the proposed method can avoid the shortages of traditional method. Furthermore, The FEM numerical simulation of wind-induced response of the super-large cooling tower has been carried out based on the improved Generally Coupled Method, to some extent, which can fully account for the coupling effects between structrual background and resonant modes, showing that the updated algorithms can obtain satisfactory re-illustration about wind-excited dynamic performance.