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New Natural Draft Cooling Tower of 200 m of

Height,
ARTICLE in ENGINEERING STRUCTURES DECEMBER 2002
Impact Factor: 1.84 DOI: 10.1016/S0141-0296(02)00082-2

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Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

New natural draft cooling tower of 200 m of height

Dieter Busch a, Reinhard Harte b, Wilfried B. Kratzig 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
Kratzig & 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 flue 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 fill construction. Further, the design and structural analysis of the tower is described with respect to
the German codified 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 figures. 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 efficiency
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 efficiency. 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. Kratzig).

pletion, it will possess with clearly over 43% the highest

electrical net degree of efficiency (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
efficiency 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 finally enhance the total net efficiency
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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D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

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 fields 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. 1.

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

Computer vision of the future lignite power plant Niederaussem.

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

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 fill 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].

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
throat. As has been pointed out by Kra tzig and Zerna
[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 influences favorably all mentioned aspects, see
Busch et al. [5].
Total tower height h, column height hC and lower shell
radius rL are generally fixed 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 flow 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

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 amplification) 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-finding process in the con-

1511

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

1512

Fig. 5.

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

Shape-finding 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 infinite 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 codified 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

Fig. 6.

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

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 influences 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
has been demonstrated in Harte and Kra tzig [10] for a
recently constructed cooling tower.
After a series of systematic pre-design analyses [3],
the following optimized parameters of the shell middle
surface had been fixed for the tower to be executed. With
regard to the general hyperbola equation
r(z) r0 {1 (hTz)2 / b2},
we finally 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. 7. Shape-finding process: dependence of total shell reinforcement on hT and T.

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

1513

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 flue gas
An interesting detail of this new tower is the inlet of
the cleaned flue gas stream into the shell by two tubes
made of glass-fiber 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 flue gas has
to be cleaned for sulfur- and nitrogen-oxides; in Niederaussem this is executed by chemical washing processes. This cools down the flue gas temperature from
240C to 80C. In order to avoid re-heating of the cleaned flue 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 flue gas has, up to now, been
guided from the release of the purification 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 flue gas stream. For efficiency 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
final 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

flue gas inlets.

these deficiencies, 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 finally 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 fill
construction.
In spite of the chemical gas-washing process, the cleaned flue gas still contains low concentrations of SOx
and NOx. As a consequence of the flue 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 fluids
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-

1514

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

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 liquifier, 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
85/35 (Sa ureResistenter BetonAcid Resistant High
Performance Concrete).

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)

Tensile strength Bending tensile Modulus of

strength
elasticity
(N/mm2)
(N/mm2)
(N/mm2)

82.03

2.88

6.31

40 400

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 amplification 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 influenced
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 finally 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
defined 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 final design analysis of stresses and deformations
for all single load cases has been computed within standard linear finite 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
flue 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 final
design, comprises the shell, the supports, the foundation
and the soil stiffness. No formal adaptive analysis has

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

been performed, since more than 4 years of design work

have required detailed local model refinements until the
desired quality had been gained. Fig. 9, a 20% resolution
of the final 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 flue
gas inlets) have been portrayed.
As codified 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

1515

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 influence 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 influence of temperature gradients T is rather
small, see Fig. 19, while their deformation influence 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 defined 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 flue 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

G 1.75W,
G 1.75W T;
the instability limit state for the load combination
l(G W),

Fig. 9. FE-mesh for final tower design including shell, supports

and foundation.

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

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D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

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 insufficient circumferential reinforcement,
appearing then at rather low wind load levels. If in a
virgin (uncracked) cooling tower shell wind loads in

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

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 sufficient
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 flue
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 confirmed 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 final failure of the tower
is mainly due to local tension failure, the gained results
will differ only marginally from those expected for the
final 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

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

1517

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 finite 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
again in Kra tzig et al. [14]. Within this project, we report
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 first 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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D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

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, finally 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 filtering. 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.

D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

1519

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-finding optimization during the conceptual design
phase, see Section 2.2 and Bischoff [3], and of few
reinforcement re-designs after first 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

Fig. 18.

Load-displacement plots for G T45 lW.

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

T45 2.3W.

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D. Busch et al. / Engineering Structures 24 (2002) 15091521

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 influenced only marginally because of similar
global crack-patterns in both cases closely before failure.
This recognition can be confirmed 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).

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.

nology power station component exhibits a series of new

innovative design elements, namely the careful shapefinding pre-design of the shell, the high positioned flue
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 efficient
electric energy plant with savings of 30% of fossil fuel
compared to power stations of the eighties.

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