ABSTRACT
To clarify the surface wind pressure characteristics of the cylinder-cone section steel cooling tower under different ventilation rates of the bottom louvers, the method of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation is used to analyze the wind pressure on its outer surface. The different ventilation rates of the louvers at the bottom of the cooling tower were simulated by the porous-jump boundary condition in the FLUENT software, and the average wind pressure coefficient of the outer surface of the structure under different ventilation rates was obtained. The results showed that with the increase of the ventilation rate at the bottom of the cooling tower, the position of the extreme point of the shape coefficient at the lower cone section H/d = 0.2 advanced. And the wind suction in the leeward area at the upper cylinder section H/d = 1 gradually decreased. The complex flow conditions in the leeward area of the cooling tower made the wind pressure here greatly affected by the ventilation rate at the bottom of the structure, and the shape coefficient at the 90° tower bottom air inlet of the cooling tower had the largest change. The bottom ventilation rate of the cylinder-cone section steel cooling tower had a great influence on the wind pressure characteristics of the outer surface of the structure, which needs to be considered in the wind resistance design of the structure.
