Surface Wind Load and Action Mechanism for Super Large Cooling Towers Under Simultaneous Actions of WindRain

Abstract:

Under extreme weather conditions with strong wind and rainstorm, the rainstorm will directly affect the aerodynamic force on the cooling tower surface, and change the turbulent characteristics of fluctuating wind. However, most traditional researches have only paid attention to the impact force characteristics of wind driven rain on structural surface. In order to solve this problem, aiming at the 210 m world tallest cooling tower in China, the wind field and rain field are simulated respectively by using the continuous model and the discrete phase model based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, based on which, the action mechanism of the moving speed and trajectory of rain drops in the wind and rain fields are revealed. Besides, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of wind loads, rain loads, raininduced pressure, and equivalent pressure coefficient of 9 different combinations of wind speed and rain intensity are conducted. The surface loads of cooling tower under such extreme conditions can be well predicted based on the equivalent pressure coefficient proposed in this paper.