Years of progress in cooling tower research and practice

Abstract

The IASS Working Group on Cooling Towers has been most active and productive from the very beginning. The researchs until 1979 were closed with the document 'Recommendations for the Design of Hyperbolic or other Similarly Shaped Cooling Towers' published in the same year in Madrid[1]. This document with emphasis on the assessment of the wind action on buckling design and constructional requirements has found broad application and is taken as basis for the cooling tower design guidelines of many countries. This paper discusses the period since 1980 which has been full of progress with a lot of developments in research and practice. Subjects covered include numerical investigations, material laws, tower geometries, buckling analyses, and others.