LAUSR

Abstract Cooling towers are an important part of thermal power plants, and applications of steel cooling towers have increased in recent years. Hyperbolic cooling towers (HCTs) have a traditional geometry. However, this style may be less suitable for steel structures, owing to its construction difficulties. A simpler tower shape is beneficial for constructing steel structures, as it improves construction efficiency and reduces costs. Therefore, the cylinder-frustum cooling tower (CFCT) was selected as the research object in this study. The cooling performance of CFCTs was studied experimentally and by numerical simulations. In the experiment, the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique was introduced to measure the velocity inside the tower. The results show that the cooling performance of the HCT and that of the CFCT were mostly similar in no-wind conditions. In the numerical simulation, two cooling tower heights were researched to ensure the validity of the results. The influence of geometric parameter p, which is the ratio of frustum height to the shell height, on the cooling performance was studied via computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and recommended geometric parameters were proposed. The recommended value range p for the CFCT is 0.3–0.5.