FIELD MEASUREMENT AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF EXTERNAL WIND PRESSURE OF RIBBED COOLING TOWER

The hyperbolic thin-shell cooling tower is a typical wind-sensitive structure, and the full-size measurement is the most direct and important way to study the distribution of wind pressure on the surface of the cooling tower. But due to the limitations of engineering conditions and meteorological conditions, the field measured data are relatively lacking, and the field test data of ribbed cooling towers are less. In order to analyze the wind pressure distribution on the surface of the cooling tower, we chose a ribbed cooling tower in Toksun County, Xinjiang, China, where there is strong wind all year round, and field measurements were carried out to understand the wind load characteristics of the tower under the perennial dominant wind direction and the maximum wind direction. It is found that the absolute value of the negative pressure on the leeward side is larger than that in the code and the fluctuating wind pressure coefficient fluctuates greatly when the field measured wind speed is greater than 10m/s (15 meters above the ground). And for circular section cooling tower, the Reynolds number (Re) has great influence on wind pressure. With the increase of Re, the absolute value of the average negative pressure of the tail wind pressure coefficient increases, which should be paid attention to in design. Meanwhile, the regression curves of the average wind pressure coefficients measured on site under several typical working conditions are given by using the least square method, and its form is consistent with the standard (but the coefficients are different). Finally, Fluent software is used to calculate the external wind pressure of the cooling tower, and the variation law of numerical calculation is consistent with that of the field measured results, the Chinese code and German code.