From large natural draft cooling tower shells to chimneys of solar upwind power plants

Abstract

Natural draft cooling towers (NDCTs) presently form the world-largest RC shell structures, solar updraft power plants (SUPPs) will do this in future. The paper starts with explanations of the working principles of NDCTs and SUPPs. In industrialized countries with strong legal emphasis on sustainable power production technologies, NDCTs are widely spread, while SUPPs represent future solar power generation concepts in the world¿s tropical areas, using solar irradiation as power plant fuel. Consequently, the paper elaborates on recent German NDCTs, under them the world-highest tower shell. The design of such highefficient RC tower shells will be explained including their critical response characteristics. The paper then changes to future SUPPs, describing the structural components of their solar chimneys, followed by a sketch of some of their critical response characteristics. The aim of this presentation is to draw the readers¿ attention to extremely large shell structures (Mega-shells), present and in future, and to demonstrate their close structural mechanics relationship to each other.