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Design and construction of efficient and economic Reinforced Concrete (R.C.) Hyperbolic Cooling Towers have driven the engineers toward the design of tall and thin-shell towers which have considerable high slenderness aspect ratio. Consequently, the shell of R.C. Cooling Towers with relative high slenderness aspect ratio is extremely prone to buckling instability due to wind loading. To increase the structural stability or buckling safety factor, one economic approach is to design and construct stiffening rings for the R.C. Hyperbolic Cooling Towers. Despite the research previously performed to determine the effect of stiffening rings on the buckling behavior of the R.C. Hyperbolic Cooling Towers, information resulting in maximum buckling stability is absent considering the optimized utilization of the quantity and dimension as well as the location of this type of stiffeners. In this paper, not only the effect of the stiffening rings on the buckling stability of the R.C. Cooling Tower is studied but also the optimized location,quantity and dimension of the stiffening rings are carried out for a sample RC Cooling Tower. The dimensions of the selected sample cooling tower are in average typical dimensions which are used in the current practice. In this study, finite element (F. E.) analyses has been carried out to define the buckling modes and resistance of this tower due to wind loading for different number of stiffening ring configurations. Based on the conducted buckling analysis, the optimized number, location and dimension of the stiffening rings that maximizes the tower.s buckling stability are defined and the methodology to achieve this information is discussed in this paper.

Keywords: R.C. hyperbolic cooling towers, Concrete shell, Buckling safety factor, Finite element

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