Buckling of Natural Draft Cooling Towers and Structural Safety

• Autores: W.B. Kratzig, Matthias Andres, Ulrich Eckstein
• Localización: Journal of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures, ISSN-e 1996-9015, ISSN 1028-365X, Vol. 57, Nº. 1, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Special Issue on Cooling Towers), págs. 13-24
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Natural Draft Cooling Towers (NDCTs) are extremely thin shell structures, clearly sensitive to instability failure. After the Ferrybridge-disaster in 1965, world-wide research efforts started to investigate the reasons for these collapses, including the possibility of instabilities. The paper will elucidate the different stability verification concepts for NDCTs over the last 40 years, starting with early experiments. This is followed by improvements of semi-experimental (local) methods, succeeded by modern stability verifications based on FE analysis techniques. The important question of influence of geometric imperfections on the instability of NDCTs is also addressed. Finally the paper offers the Eurocode-derivation for an appropriate factor of buckling safety.