ABSTRACT
Natural draft cooling towers, although not slender, are large wind-sensitive structures; the loading and response under wind action of these structures will be considered briefly in this chapter. It is dealt in the Vickery and Basu model with a non-linear, amplitude-dependent, aerodynamic damping, within the random excitation model. There are a number of specialist design codes for cooling towers which include specification of wind loads. A simplified approach to the dynamic response of tall guyed masts, in which the responses due to 'patch loads' are scaled to match the response calculated more rigorously from random vibration theory, is described by Davenport and Sparling and Sparling et al. The wind loading of hyperbolic cooling towers, guyed masts and wind turbine towers, are complex due to their structural behavior. The main features of the wind loading and response of these structures are discussed.
