Wind pressure distribution around a ribless hyperbolic cooling tower

Abstract This paper describes the wind-tunnel model testing and full-scale measurement on a 90 meters high, ribless hyperbolic natural draft cooling tower in Maomin Power Station, Guang-dong, China. Wind-tunnel tests give the mean pressure distribution on outer surface both in uniform flow and in atmospheric boundary layer flow for different Reynolds Numbers (Re) and different surface roughnesses. Full-scale measurement gives the mean pressure coefficients at Re≈5.4×10 7 with minimum pressure of −1.47, as well as the pressures on inner surface. The paper also discusses the possibility of yielding larger Re results by increasing the surface roughness in wind-tunnel testing at smaller Re.