Buckling of cooling tower shells with ring-stiffeners

Abstract

With the stability analysis of hyperbolic cooling tower shells with ring-stiffeners, our paper proposes the linear pre-buckling consistent theory. The numerical result shows that this linear analysis method is very effective and practical in engineering, for its precision of computation is up to the level of the nonlinear analysis when it is used for the study of critical loads of the hyperbolic cooling tower which is mainly governed by wind pressure and for the study of the effect of some other factors concerned in design on the buckling of shells. Based on that, we have obtained a series of conclusions which will greatly benefits the engineering design when discussing the effect on the critical wind loading of the shell which is caused by the following factors such as the position of rings, the number of rings and the dead weight.