On damage process of natural draught cooling towers

Natural draught cooling towers often develop visible crack structures as consequences of progressive damage processes over their life-time. The vim of this paper is a numerical demonstration of the progressive damage process of cooling towers, representatively for the reinforced concrete structures, in order to improve the durability and extend the life-time of structures subjected to such damage processes. For the analyses, the applied material model for reinforced concrete will be briefly introduced. An existing natural draught cooling tower with a pronounced crack structure, in which this crack structure indicates the typical damage pattern of large cooling towers will be numerically simulated. The change of dynamical behavior of the structure with regard to natural frequencies, reflecting the degrading stiffness of the structure in dependence of the load type and intensity, will be presented and discussed.