Influence of support idealization on free vibration response of cooling tower shell

Abstract

The idealization of support conditions for the hyperbolic cooling tower shell has significant influence on the free vibration response of the shell. Although considerable research is available in the literature regarding the behavior of the shell under different support conditions independently, the comparative study of different idealizations of support conditions on free vibration response of tower shell is the objective of the current study. Most of the researchers considered the pinned support or the fixed support for the shell and inferred that these idealizations adequately represent the free vibration response of the shell supported on columns. However, the current study indicates that the natural frequencies of the column supported shell is closer to the fixed/pinned idealization with the variation of 6-10% for the initial few modes only and vary to 40-50% in the higher modes.