On the wind and earthquake response of reinforced concrete chimneys

Slender structures like reinforced concrete (RC) chimneys are severely damaged or collapsed during severe wind storms or strong ground motions all over the world. Today, with the improvement in technology and industry, most factories need these slender structures with increasing height and decreasing in shell thickness causing vulnerable to winds and earthquakes. Main objectives in this study are to make structural wind and earthquake analysis of RC chimneys by using a well-known international standard CICIND 2001 and real recorded time history accelerations and to clarify weak points of these tall and slender structures against these severe natural actions. Findings of this study show that maximum tensile stress and shear stress approximately increase 103.90% and 312.77% over or near the openings on the body of the RC chimneys that cause brittle failure around this region of openings