Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521 www.elsevier.

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New natural draft cooling tower of 200 m of height

Dieter Busch a, Reinhard Harte b, Wilfried B. Kra tzig c,, Ulrich Montag d
b a RWE Solution AG, Kruppstrasse 5, 45128 Essen, Germany Department of Civil Engineering, University of Wuppertal, Pauluskichstrasse 7, D-42285 Wuppertal, Germany c Department of Civil Engineering, Ruhr-University Bochum, D-44780 Bochum, Germany d Kra tzig & Partner Engineering Consultants, Buscheyplatz 11-15, D-44801 Bochum, Germany

Received 22 January 2002; received in revised form 17 May 2002; accepted 29 May 2002

Abstract In the years 1999 to 2001 a new natural draft cooling tower has been built at the RWE power station at Niederaussem, with 200 m elevation the highest cooling tower world-wide. For many reasons, such structures can not be designed merely as enlargement of smaller ones, on the contrary, it is full of innovative new design elements. The present paper starts with an overview over the tower and a description of its geometry, followed by an elucidation of the conceptual shape optimization. The structural consequences of the ue gas inlets through the shell at a height of 49 m are explained as well as the needs for an advanced high performance concrete for the wall and the ll construction. Further, the design and structural analysis of the tower is described with respect to the German codied safety concept for these structures. Finally, the necessity of extended durability of this tower is commented, the durability design concept is explained in detail and illustrated by virtue of a series of gures. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Natural draft cooling towers; Reinforced concrete shells; Design for durability

1. Introduction: the new 965 MW lignite power block at Niederaussem The RWE Energie AG, the largest German electricity producer, has operated since 1961 a lignite power plant at the small village of Niederaussem, 20 km west of Cologne. This power plant is composed of eight single power blocks with a total capacity of 2700 MW. The single power stations possess net degrees of efciency from 31.0% (1961) to 35.5% (1974), depending on their individual ages. Starting in 1998, a new power block is under construction with an intended net capacity of 965 MW of electricity (gross capacity: 1027 MW). Because of increasing energy prices in Europe and of growing consciousness of limited natural resources, this new station is equipped with highly innovative novel technologies in order to achieve an utmost degree of efciency. After com Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-234-322-9051; fax +49-234321-4149. E-mail address: wilfried.b.kraetzig@sd.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (W.B. Kra tzig).

pletion, it will possess with clearly over 43% the highest electrical net degree of efciency (gross degree: 48.5%) of all fossil fueled (coal and lignite) power plants worldwide, and it likewise will become the largest lignite power block in the world. One of the required innovative technology steps of this new power station is an increased steam temperature (580C) and pressure (270 bar) at turbine entrance, the next a reduced pressure in the condenser, both steps requiring a considerably larger amount of cooling water. Solely these two single measures raise the net degree of efciency of the plant by 2.7%, compared to latest standard technologies. This increase requires a remarkably enlarged cooling component, namely a natural draft cooling tower, 200 m high, by expectation the tallest cooling tower and the largest shell structure in the world. It is anticipated that such a tower increase in height and cooling capacity may nally enhance the total net efciency of the electricity generation towards 45%. Clearly, natural lignite resources will be preserved thereby, and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the environment will be reduced considerably. But design and construction of such giant tower required a series of innovative

0141-0296/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 4 1 - 0 2 9 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 8 2 - 2

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structural technology steps which probably will start a new cooling tower generation. Fig. 1 gives a survey over the existing power station with the new block added by computer visualization.

2. The worlds highest cooling tower 2.1. Geometry of the tower structure Due to Fig. 2, the total height of the cooling tower is 200 m. Its base diameter measures 152.54 m, that one of the tower shell 136.00 m, and the top opening is 88.41 m wide. Both the outer and inner shell surfaces possess areas of more than 60 000 m2 equivalent to over 10 soccer elds each. The shell structure is composed of two hyperbolic shells of revolution both meeting at the throat, and exhibits in its main parts a wall thickness between 0.22 and 0.24 m, increasing towards the lower shell rim. The top rim is stiffened by an edge member of U cross-section, extending into the interior of the tower shell by 1.51 m with a shank-height of 1.20 m. In order to reduce cracking-sensibility due to wind vibration, this edge member is pre-stressed by four SUSPA tendons with eight monowires of 150 mm2 cross-section each of steel quality 1 570/1 770 N/mm2. The lower edge member is formed by a thickening of the shell up to 1.16 m. Fig. 3 offers an impression of both edge members. The complete shell is constructed of a special acid-resistant high-perform-

Fig. 2.

Overview over the geometry of the cooling tower.

ance concrete of 85 N/mm2 of compression strength, called ARHPC 85/35 as explained later. The cooling tower shell is supported by 48 meridional columns 14.68 m high, built of reinforced concrete C 45/55 to Eurocode EC 2. Their thickness ranges from 1.16 m on top to 3.10 m above foundation, their width is 1.40 m. All columns have been founded on a reinforced

Fig. 1.

Computer vision of the future lignite power plant Niederaussem.

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Fig. 3.

Details of lower and upper edge member of the tower shell.

concrete base ring of dimensions 6.60 m1.80 m, resting generally on rather well consolidated gravel soil. Softer soil had to be exchanged, and along some areasat the water inlets and the water outletthe ring-width had to be enlarged, leading to a rotationally non-symmetric foundation. The further tower components are big but rather conventional. The interior of the tower is captured by the large water basin for collection of the re-cooled water. Its basin plate and walls consist of water-proof concrete C 30/37 0.20 m thick, founded on 0.15 m of concrete base layer C 12/15 over an anti-freeze layer of 0.30 m. The ll construction and the water distribution are designed as a prefabricated reinforced concrete beamcolumn structure, also made of high-performance concrete ARHPC 85/35. A brief outline of the complete structure is delivered in [4]. 2.2. Conceptual design and shape optimization of tower meridian Cooling towers of such size cannot be considered merely as extrapolations of smaller ones. At such large dimensions, the shape of the meridian in interaction with the loading conditions is of much higher importance for the states of stress (structural safety), for the initiation of concrete cracking (durability), for the elastic stability (overall stiffness) and for the vibration properties (dynamic load amplication) of the structural response, compared to smaller towers. In such latter cases, shapes may by all means be selected unfavorably without disadvantages, since their design is governed more pronouncedly by minimum code requirements, like minimum wall thickness and minimum reinforcement. For large high cooling tower shell, the shape-nding process in the con-

ceptual design phase thus is of highest importance and has to balance a series of different aspects to an optimum solution. Generally as illustrated in Fig. 4, the meridional shape of a hyperboloidal cooling tower shell consists of a lower and an upper hyperbola branch, which both meet at the throat. The hyperbola axis need not correspond with the tower axis. Thus the curvature of the meridian varies over the tower height, in general with a maximum at the tzig and Zerna throat. As has been pointed out by Kra [15], maximum size as well as uniformity of the distribution of membrane stresses, consequently the load level of crack initiation, the safety against instability, and the natural frequenciesas intensity measures of the dynamic responseare severely effected by the shape of the meridian: Greatest possible uniformity of the curvature inuences favorably all mentioned aspects, see Busch et al. [5]. Total tower height h, column height hC and lower shell radius rL are generally xed by the thermal design, likewise the throat radius rT with small admissible variability. The upper shell radius rU must be not smaller than rT for reasons of an unperturbed steam ow into the environment. All other parameters in Fig. 4 are free within certain design limits, and can be selected in order to optimize the above mentioned aspects including construction and architectural points of view. Since the upper shell parts above the throat are of minor importance in this context, we will concentrate solely on the lower hyperbola branch. As one observes from Fig. 4, the angle bL of the shell inclination at the lower rim is restricted by

Fig. 4. Basic parameters of a natural draft cooling tower.

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Fig. 5.

Shape-nding process: dependence of min f on hT and bT.

tanbL(rLrT) / (hThC). The sign of equality herein designates the smallest possible value of bL, at which limit condition two conical frusta (with straight generatrices) meet at the throat in a break point of innite curvature. The maximum angle bL is limited by the maximum possible inclination of the form-work system for the shell construction, by experience noticeable below 20. It is an interesting fact that most of the above mentioned technical aspects improve for bigger bL, except for the aesthetics of the structure: A cooling tower generally is perceived as more pleasant for medium values of bL. Such exemplary variations of basic shell parameters can be seen from Figs. 5 and 6. They showas part results of the shape optimizations [3]the lowest natural frequencies min f (all for circumferential wave number n=5) and the lowest elastic buckling safeties min n (a German codied design condition requires n5) for the general tower geometry from Fig. 2. Both design parameters generally improve for higher bL. In these predesign studies the shell openings and the thickened wall parts around both holes have not been considered, in order to maintain rotational symmetry of the structure. While examining Fig. 5 one should be aware that an increase of the lowest natural frequency from a certain

level by 10% will reduce the dynamic wind action by even more than 10%. The total amount of shell reinforcement in Fig. 7, designed on basis of the guideline VGB [18], is determined by the usual minimum requirements of 0.3% of Ac in meridional and circumferential direction, andfor durability reasonsby 0.6% in circumferential direction in the upper half of the shell, distributed on both sides of the shell cross-section. Clearly, this parameter inuences the economy of the tower. Because of identical wall thickness of all variants, the minimum construction requirements for the reinforcement have been selected identically for all designed variants in Fig. 7. The observed increase of reinforcement there is a clear indication of the growing unevenness and rising peak values of the tension stresses in the shell, as the angle bL reduces and consequently the throat height hT increases. Consequently from Figs. 5 to 7, unfavorably shaped cooling towers may exhibit up to 40% more steel reinforcement. In strong wind velocities, they thus will suffer greater tension stresses at lower gale velocities, leading to earlier and wider crack-damages in the shell. This will probably result in a shorter life duration, as tzig [10] for a has been demonstrated in Harte and Kra recently constructed cooling tower. After a series of systematic pre-design analyses [3], the following optimized parameters of the shell middle surface had been xed for the tower to be executed. With regard to the general hyperbola equation r(z) r0 {1 (hTz)2 / b2}, we nally have chosen for the lower (upper) branch: r0 1.0730 (42.3828) m a 43.7030 (0.2472) m b 105.5967 (7.9419) m hT 142.0000 (142.0000) m.

Fig. 6.

Shape-nding process: Dependence of min n on hT and bT.

Fig. 7. Shape-nding process: dependence of total shell reinforcement on hT and T.

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Both hyperbola branches meet at the throat with continuous (zero) tangent. At the lower rim, angle bL as well as inclination of the column axes measure 17.8. This cooling tower variant has been pictured in reduced scale on Fig. 2. 2.3. Inlets for cleaned ue gas An interesting detail of this new tower is the inlet of the cleaned ue gas stream into the shell by two tubes made of glass-ber reinforced resin, both 6.50 m diameter at an axial height of 49.00 m above ground. As shown in Fig. 2, this requires two openings of 9.00 m width in the shell at an axial distance of 19.014.00 m. In all German operating power plants, the ue gas has to be cleaned for sulfur- and nitrogen-oxides; in Niederaussem this is executed by chemical washing processes. This cools down the ue gas temperature from 240C to 80C. In order to avoid re-heating of the cleaned ue gas for release over the classical smoke-stack, the latter is mixed to the cooling tower vapor and thereby distributed into the environment. Thus, a smoke-stack is saved, but necessary for the gas inlet are those two mentioned neighbored openings. They will generally cause stress concentrations, and weaken the shell wall to an important extent by reducing the lowest buckling safety as well as lowest natural frequency of the cooling tower. In order to keep these perturbations of the shell response small, the washed ue gas has, up to now, been guided from the release of the purication plant, here 49.00 m above ground, down to the lower shell rim. There over the water distribution, they were led into the interior of the tower, which causes considerable velocity losses of the ue gas stream. For efciency reasons, the pipes in Niederaussem were conducted at same height straight and with free spansFig. 1into the shell, requiring both holes in Fig. 2. Consequently, both tubes carry heavy loads into the shell, each 2000 kN in vertical and 400 kN in horizontal direction. To counteract all degrading shell effects, the surroundings of both openings were re-strengthened by thickening of the shell wall up to 45 cm and by considerable additional reinforcement. Both measures aimed at a recovery not only of the critical natural frequencies and buckling safeties of the unperturbed shell, but also of the original mode shapes. Fig. 8 demonstrates the result by comparison of the lowest elastic vibration mode: Frequency as well as vibration mode shape of the nal solution matches nearly perfectly with those ones of the hole-free shell. But in spite of this re-strengthening, noticeable response effects of the shell openings remain in the tower construction. Strong non-axisymmetric effects were added to the original non-symmetric soil conditions, leading to additional shell bending. To reduce

Fig. 8. Comparison of lowest natural vibration modes with/without ue gas inlets.

these deciencies, intermediate ring-stiffenerslike on top of the shellwere considered during the design process, as proposed for example by Form et al. [7] or Gould and Guedelhoefer [9]. But although such ring stiffeners tend to equalize all states of stress over the circumference, they nally had been rejected for economical reasons. 2.4. High-performance concrete The most spectacular new construction element of this cooling tower is the earlier mentioned high-performance concrete, especially developed for the shell and the ll construction. In spite of the chemical gas-washing process, the cleaned ue gas still contains low concentrations of SOx and NOx. As a consequence of the ue gas injection into the vapor, the inner face of the upper shell will be attacked chemically by low concentrated acids with pHvalues from 3.5 to 6.0 or just by condensed steam, as long as in winter-service conditions the condensation point lies within the shell wall. Both corrosive uids will, in winter months, permanently attack the concrete of the inner shell face over the planned service lifetime of 55 years. The classical counteraction against such corrosive attacks in Germany is by coating the inner tower surface with co-polymeres on acrylic-venyl-resin basis, as described in Engelfried [6]. This however does not seem to be manageable in the present case, mainly because of the limited life-duration of the curing of 12 years. In view of the few and short service breaks of modern power stations, a necessary multiple re-curing of the extremely large inner shell surface of more than 60 000 m2 seems impossible. In order to completely exclude rehabilitation measures of the concrete, a new high-per-

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formance concrete with high acid resistance has been developed and successfully placed in-situ, see Hillemeier and Hu ttl [12] or Lohaus [16]. The innovative element of this concrete is an extremely dense package of the aggregate and a rather low amount of cement. As far as possible, water is substituted by additional portions of liquier, and the microscale package is improved by additives of micro-silica slurry; for details see Hillemeier and Hu ttl [12]. This specially designed and carefully tested mixture does not violate the classical properties of cooling tower concrete, namely high early-strength, high structural density and high resistance against frost (Gould and Kra tzig[8]). The extremely dense package automatically leads to a concrete with high compression strength of fcm85 N/mm2. On the other hand, Youngs modulus Ec and the tension strength fctm had to be controlled at values of a C 35/45 in order to limit thermal stresses and reduce crack-widths on the shell exterior. Basic properties of this concrete measured in-situ are given in Table 1. Since they vary between those of a C 85 (compression strength) and a C 35/45 (stiffness and tensile strength), the new concrete mixture has been named SRB-ARHPC ureResistenter BetonAcid Resistant High 85/35 (Sa Performance Concrete).

in which z describes the height above ground. To derive the pressure distribution on the outer surface of the shell from q0(z), this function has to be multiplied by one of the normalized, dimensionless circumferential pressure distribution functions cp(q) from [18]. Depending on the surface roughness of the wind ribs, the distribution function named K 1.4 has been selected: qa(z,q) jq0(z)cp(q). The dynamic amplication factor f has been evaluated to 1.07. As usual in Germany, internal suction is considered only in the limit state of instability. As clearly demonstrated in Fig. 1, the present tower is not an isolated building, it hence may be inuenced severely by wind interference actions of other cooling towers or boiler houses of neighboring blocks. As a further design basis for the wind loading of the new Niederaussem cooling tower, a series of wind tunnel investigations in the boundary layer wind tunnel of the RuhrUniversity in Bochum have been carried out, which are detailed in Busch et al. [5]. Special attention therein was given to all negative (load-increasing) effects of the surrounding situation for the new tower. Positive effects, such as sheltering caused by existing buildings, were neglected because of the long service life of the new plant and the possibly lower ages of existing ones. All this nally led to 24 sets of different, directiondependent wind loading conditions. Each loading condition consists of the axi-symmetric pressure distribution of the isolated tower, and alternatively of a non axi-symmetric wind pressure distribution considering the power station environment. Decisive for the design was the more unfavorable alternative of both, respectively. The temperature loading T in VGB-BTR [18] is dened with air temperature differences of 25 K for standard service conditions (warmer inner surface) and 45 K for winter service conditions, the latter for example for air temperatures of 15C outside and +30C inside the tower. In addition, sun radiation of 25 K (warmer outer surface) has to be considered. The seismic loading conditions follow the German Standard DIN 4149. 3.2. Stress analysis and safety concept The nal design analysis of stresses and deformations for all single load cases has been computed within standard linear nite element techniques, using the software system Femas (see Beem et al. [2]). Due to the directiondependence of the wind loads caused by interference of the surrounding building environment, further due to the ue gas injection and due to uneven foundation and soil conditions, there existed no axi-symmetry in the FEmodel. The computer model with a total of 50 919 degrees of freedom, which has been selected for the nal design, comprises the shell, the supports, the foundation and the soil stiffness. No formal adaptive analysis has

3. Structural analysis and design 3.1. Design loads Structural analysis and design of the cooling tower is based on the German design regulations VGB-BTR [18]. Main loading conditions for these structures are dead weight G, wind load W and thermal actions T. Because of the location of the plant-site, also seismic excitations E had to be considered in the design. The highly advanced surveying and controlling in German cooling tower technology admitted a complete suppression of initial imperfections during the design. In the guideline VGB-BTR [18], wind loads W are described in detail for isolated towers. The basic values of the dynamic design pressure q0(z) for W for the decisive German wind zone IImaximum 3 s peak velocities with 50 years of return periodfollow the exponential law q0(z) 0.90(z / 10)0.22,
Table 1 In-situ mean values of material properties of SRB-ARHPC 85/35 Compression strength (N/mm2) 82.03 Tensile strength Bending tensile Modulus of strength elasticity (N/mm2) (N/mm2) (N/mm2) 2.88 6.31 40 400

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been performed, since more than 4 years of design work have required detailed local model renements until the desired quality had been gained. Fig. 9, a 20% resolution of the nal FE-model, gives an impression of the applied discretization. Readers who are interested in the evaluated states of stress in the tower shell for single load cases, are referred to the response maps in Gould and Kra tzig [8]. There the main membrane forces and bending moments of a pre-design version of this cooling tower (without ue gas inlets) have been portrayed. As codied in VGB-BTR [18], the cooling tower has been analyzed and designed for the following limit states: the limit state of serviceability applying total safety factors g 1.75 2.10 for concrete in compression and =1.71 for steel, applied to the following load combinations G W, G W T, G W / 3 T E, G 0.70W T for proof of crack widths limitation with T for standard service conditions; the failure limit state, applying partial safety factors gG=1.00, gW=1.75 for the actions, and gms=1.00 for steel, gmc=1.50 for concrete on the resistance side, for G 1.75W, G 1.75W T; the instability limit state for the load combination l(G W),

requiring minimum stability safeties of l5.0 due to DIN 1045. According to VGB-BTR [18], the wind loading W in this limit state contains also the inuence of internal suction. The evaluation of the safety checks and the determination of the required reinforcement is executed completely computer-internally. For the failure limit state, the 2nd load combination can be omitted, since the load carrying inuence of temperature gradients T is rather small, see Fig. 19, while their deformation inuence may be rather pronounced. The crack widths in the shell and their supports are generally limited to 0.2 mm. Fig. 10 sketches the amount of reinforcement steel BSt 500 S, evaluated on basis of the mentioned limit states, for the cooling tower shell. Because of the direction-dependent wind loads, there have been dened two sectors with different meridional reinforcement. The amount of circumferential steel is equal in both sectors, and additional reinforcement is required for the thickened shell wall around the ue gas inlets. As usual, both faces of the shell are reinforced by an orthogonal mesh, arranged in symmetric manner. To avoid initiation of vertical cracks, the circumferential bars are placed outside, the meridional ones inside. The spacing of the latter is arrange in 4-bar groups with distances from 9.2 cm to 13.0 cm in the lower shell quarter, followed by 19.0 cm in the remainder. Their splicing is staggered at regular intervals, while the splicing of the

Fig. 9. FE-mesh for nal tower design including shell, supports and foundation.

Fig. 10. Sector-dependent reinforcement distribution in the shell.

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circumferential bars is random. The distances of circumferential bars vary from 8.2 to 20.0 cm. The minimum concrete cover is 3.0 cm. Fig. 11 reports on construction works at the shell.

4. Design for durability 4.1. Crack-damage protection by multi-levelsimulation technique As explained in Section 2.4, the novel acid-resistant high-performance concrete ARHPC 85/35 forms an innovative material platform for durability extension. But in order to really achieve a cooling tower with extended durability properties, this new material has to be combined with advanced design and construction techniques. One of the observed weaknesses of earlier cooling tower shells world-wide is cracking of the outer surface in meridional direction. This phenomenon is due to wind, thermal and hydro-mechanical effects in combination with insufcient circumferential reinforcement, appearing then at rather low wind load levels. If in a virgin (uncracked) cooling tower shell wind loads in

combination with temperature initiate crack-damage, the set of natural frequencies generally will decrease. This especially holds true for the lowest frequencies, which govern the towers dynamic response behavior. Thus the highly-tuned dynamic system of a cooling tower will be shifted towards the center of the peak of the wind spectrum, for further increase of dynamic wind excitations. Consequently, such shift will probably lead to enlargements of the existing crack-damage, both in terms of crack-lengths and crack-widths in the sense of a progressive damage process (see Harte et al. [11]). If we are aware that each face of the cooling tower shell exceeds the area of 60 000 m2, it is evident that intensive crack-repairs during the service lifetime of the tower, probably after a couple of gales, are generally out of any question: The design has to guarantee crackfreedom up to rather high wind speeds, with sufcient low probability of appearance, for long periods of service life. Advanced cooling tower design concepts thus require simulation of crack-damage for typical load combinations. Such evaluation of crack-damage exceeds by far the actual standard design technologies, requiring computer simulations of at least the materially nonlinear response behavior of the tower. In order to master such time-consuming analyses, the original FE-model has been reduced to 4222 degrees of freedom, neglecting the ue gas inlets as well as the foundation, and considering the tower due to its wind loading as an isolated structure. We have repeatedly experienced that numerical results for towers with properly strengthened openings are in a global sense closely comparable to those without holes, as has been recently conrmed by Waszczyszyn et al. [19]. Consequently, we present here the results for a predesign prototype of the Niederaussem cooling tower, alternatively intended to be built in concrete C 35/45. Since crack-initiation as well as nal failure of the tower is mainly due to local tension failure, the gained results will differ only marginally from those expected for the nal design in ARHPC 85/35. The reinforcement of this prototype tower for crack simulation is determined also due to chapter 3.2 and mapped in Fig. 12, and the material data is given in Table 2. In all other respects, the tower geometry corresponds to the executed design of Fig. 2. For such crack-damage simulations, reinforced concrete has to be modeled as a two-component composite [13]. In this project we applied 6-parameter assumed strain shell elements with a layered structure. Herein the material is modeled in 3D for concrete and by 1D steel layers (see Soric et al. [17]). Nonlinear phenomena of the response have been considered in the kinematics and of course in the material models, namely: cyclic elastic-plastic stressstrain behavior for concrete in compression with a micro-damage component

Fig. 11. Scaffolding, reinforcement and concreting of the shell.

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This material model, which has to be evaluated at each integration point of each element-layer, is described in detail in Kra tzig et al. [14]. During the incremental-iterative solution process of the structural analysis, an evaluated increment of the nodal degrees of freedom has to be transformed from the global structural level down to the single nite elements. There it is converted into strain increments of single layers, and then solvedby application of the above mentioned respective constitutive lawsfor the stress increments, which are then transformed back to the tangential stiffness and the internal nodal forces on global level. Theoretical background and further details of this rather complicated multi-levelsimulation-technique can be found in Zahlten [20] or tzig et al. [14]. Within this project, we report again in Kra on monotonic crack simulations for selected load combinations G lW and G lW T, applying the design wind W on G respectively G T by increase of l up to structural failure. 4.2. Discussion of results The achieved results are documented rst as load-displacement plots of the points A, B and C along the stagnation meridian as marked in Fig. 13. Displacements normal to the middle surface, due to dead weight G and increasing wind load W, are plotted as function of the
Fig. 12. Amount of reinforcement of shell and supports for prototype tower. Table 2 Material properties for prototype tower (normal concrete) Concrete C 35/45 (EC 2) Youngs modulus: Ec=34 000 N/mm2 Poissons ratio: n=0.2 Compression strength: fcm=35.00 N/mm2 Tension strength: fctm=2.67 N/mm2 Reinforcement steel BSt 500 S (DIN 488) Youngs modulus: Es=2.1105 MN/m2 Yield strength: fym=5.0102 MN/m2 Tension strength: ftm=5.5102 MN/m2 at strain limit: esu=0.01

after transgression of concrete strength, as described in Bazant and Kim [1]; linear-elastic behavior in the concrete tension range with brittle cracking due to the Rankine-stress-criterium, applied smeared-crack regularization; cyclic elastic-plastic stress-strain behavior of the reinforcement bars in tension and compression including the Bauschinger-effect; elastic-damaging bond behavior between reinforcement and concrete including bond-slip, cross-checked by an experimentally gained tension stiffening curve.

Fig. 13.

Points of investigation for prototype tower.

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Fig. 14.

Load-displacement plots for G lW.

wind load factor l in Fig. 14. Because of absence of temperature, this gale response depicts the tower in outof-service conditions. Obviously, there appears a linear, essentially crack-free response phase of the tower until

Fig. 16. Computed crack patterns for G 2.0W and G 2.3W (W=design value).

Fig. 15. Computed crack patterns for G 1.0W and G 1.5W (W=design value).

l1.2, e.g. for wind intensities slightly higher than the design value l=1.0 (50 years return period). It was one of the goals of this durability design, to extend the crackfree phase of the tower shell to a highest possible level, without few additional reinforcement and no thickness increase. After l1.2, a gale with approximately 100 years of return period, obviously wide-spread cracking starts with intensive stress re-distributions as observed in Fig. 14, nally leading to failure at G 2.37W. Simultaneously to certain wind loading levels, corresponding states of crack-damage of the shell are evaluated and visualized on Figs. 15 and 16. Of course, the single line-elements there are no real cracks, they rather stand for intensities and directions of cracks to be expected from the assumed smeared crack model. Cracks of smaller crack-width than 0.05 mm are suppressed therein by numerical ltering. This nonlinear crack-damage analysis uses comparable basic assumptions as the now-a-days applied standard design techniques for crack-width limitation, but its recognition is much more design-oriented.

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Fig. 19. Load-displacement comparison for G lW and G T45 lW for point B. Fig. 17. Exaggerated deformations of the tower (factor: 40).

Fig. 15 proves the expectation that up to l=1.0 no cracks will appear in the shell. First cracking evolves soon after l1.2 and is evident at l=1.5. Fig. 16 gives an impression of the states of (computed) crack-patterns in the shell for storms of pressure intensity of 2.0, respectively 2.3, the design one, the latter corresponds to a 50% increase of the design wind velocity, immediately before failure. As one observes from both Figures, for load combinations G lW the cracking in the shell is rather low, even for such extreme over-load factor like l=2.30. This is clearly a result of the careful structural shape-nding optimization during the conceptual design phase, see Section 2.2 and Bischoff [3], and of few reinforcement re-designs after rst simulation results. Fig. 17 illustrates the deformation pattern of this path to failure. Fig. 18 then maps the displacements of the same points A, B and C from Fig. 13, if ultimate service temperature T=45 K is added. Such tower state corresponds to a storm attack during cold-winter-night-service conditions. As expected, the thermal gradients

introduce a considerable pre-damage into the structure. The comparison with the response of the cold tower on Fig. 19 for point B shows, that at l1.2 the displacement of the warm tower is at least twice as high as of

Fig. 18.

Load-displacement plots for G T45 lW.

Fig. 20. Computed crack patterns for G T45 2.0W and G T45 2.3W.

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the cold one. Consequently, around point B the secantstiffness has degraded to around 50% of the original one, caused by greater crack-damage. Although cracking starts earlier in winter conditions and develops more intensively than in out-of-service conditions, the failure load is inuenced only marginally because of similar global crack-patterns in both cases closely before failure. This recognition can be conrmed by comparison of both crack-damages in Figs. 16 and 20. As shell-experts will realize, the wind load factors l=2.37, respectively 2.31, at failure are rather high, compared with the required partial safety factor for wind l=1.75 in [18]. This fact is due to design details of the tower, namely slight circumferential over-reinforcements in the upper shell allowing for nonlinear stress re-distributions, and the excellently optimized shape of the shell. We feel obliged to remark, that the wind failure load factor l3.3 of a Polish tower, evaluated in [19], is rather unrealistic for unknown reasons (erroneous reference loads, reinforcements, material models).

nology power station component exhibits a series of new innovative design elements, namely the careful shapending pre-design of the shell, the high positioned ue gas injection, and the novel acid-resistant high-performance concrete SRB-ARHPC 85/35. Intensive nonlinear computer simulations of the anticipated damage evolution and repeated re-designs have been executed in order to maintain the structures durability over the full service life of 55 years. This paper has reported on these features, which all have contributed to a landmark engineering structure, as part of an advanced highly efcient electric energy plant with savings of 30% of fossil fuel compared to power stations of the eighties.

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5. Concluding remarks The cooling tower of the new power block at the RWE electricity station Niederaussem presently is the highest cooling tower in the world at 200 m (see Fig. 21). It has just been completed and will start servicewith the complete power blockin mid 2002. This high-tech-

Fig. 21. View of the completed cooling tower shell in January 2000.

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