Thermal performance and structural behaviour of steel hyperbolic cooling tower with holes

•A design concept of setting holes in a cooling tower was proposed.•Thermal performance, wind load, and structural behaviour were all considered.•Well-placed holes slightly reduce the thermal performance of the cooling tower.•Holes reduce the wind load on the tower shell, thereby reducing steel consumption.•Design concept could successfully be used in a region with variant wind directions. Wind load is the control load for the structural design of steel cooling towers, reducing wind load is beneficial to reduce the construction cost of a steel cooling tower. In this study, based on a passive flow control method, a design concept for setting holes in a cooling tower was proposed to reduce the wind load. Taking a 220 m high hyperbolic natural draft dry steel cooling tower as the research object, five elevations and two orientations of holes were established in models. Thermal performance analysis, wind field characteristic analysis, and structural behaviour analysis were used to evaluate the design concept of setting holes. The results showed that in the case where the relative elevation of holes is lower than 0.667, holes will significantly reduce the thermal performance of the cooling tower under wind conditions. In addition, holes in the middle area of the tower will reduce the wind suction in the crosswind direction to a certain extent. Compared with the cooling tower without holes, the steel consumption of the cooling tower with holes can be reduced by 951 t. The research results verified the feasibility of the design concept of setting holes in a cooling tower.