Local–global analysis of cooling tower with cutouts

The local–global strategy is extended to column-supported reinforced concrete shell structures and applied to the nonlinear structural analysis of a column-supported reinforced concrete cooling tower shell with imperfections. In the numerical examples a column-supported R/C cooling tower with openings is considered and the nonlinear behavior is computed under a combination of dead load g and static wind pressure w. Especially, the structural behavior of the cooling tower is estimated under the combination between openings and the wind direction.