Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Cooling Tower Shell under Lateral Load on Nonuniform Foundation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe stress distributions and the ultimate strength of a reinforced concrete (R/C) cooling tower shell under a self-weight and a lateral wind load were investigated under the conditions on nonuniform foundation. The construction site of the cooling tower is quite huge and the site may have different bearing capacities within location by location. Therefore, to design such structures, the effects of uneven settlements of supporting system due to the nonuniform foundation should be considered. In modeling the cooling tower, the height of the shell was about 150 m and the radius at the lintel was about 60 m. Two kinds of supporting column systems were considered. One was the V-Column systems. The other was the Vertical column supporting systems. Also, the effects of foundation beam were considered under uneven settlement. From the numerical analysis, the stress concentration was arisen near the connections between the unsettled column and the lintel and the ultimate strength was reduced by the uneven settlement depending on the wind direction. The foundation beam represented the improvement of the damage of R/C concrete shell under uneven foundation settlement and plays an important role to transfer the stresses.