Hossein Tajmir Riahi - PhD candidate, Sharif university of technology, Iran
Bahman Haghighi - Head of structural department, Bolandpayeh co., Iran

To get a better insight about the soil properties and their effects on the structural behavior of Kazeroon cooling towers, a finite element model has been prepared by considering the structure and a huge amount of its underneath soil. Nonlinear static analysis for the dead load and nonlinear dynamic analysis for the earthquake load are done because of the importance of these loads in the design of cooling towers. Analysis results of this model are compared with the results obtained from the model used for the design of the cooling tower. Comparison showed that the effects of soil-structure interaction should be noticed carefully for cooling towers.

Cooling tower, Finite element method, Soil-structure interaction, nonlinear dynamic analysis.