Mitigation of Ground Vibration due to Collapse of a Large-Scale Cooling Tower with Novel Application of Materials as Cushions

Ground vibration induced by the collapse of large-scale cooling towers in nuclear power plants (NPPs) has recently been realized as a potential secondary disaster to adjacent nuclear-related facilities with demands for vibration mitigation. The previous concept to design cooling towers and nuclear-related facilities operating in a containment as isolated components in NPPs is inappropriate in a limited site which is the cases for inland NPPs in China. This paper presents a numerical study on the mitigation of ground vibration in a “cooling tower-soil-containment” system via a novel application of two materials acting as cushions underneath cooling towers, that is, foamed concrete and a “tube assembly.” Comprehensive “cooling tower-cushion-soil” models were built with reasonable cushion material models. Computational cases were performed to demonstrate the effect of vibration mitigation using seven earthquake waves. Results found that collapse-induced ground vibrations at a point with a distance of 300 m were reduced in average by 91%, 79%, and 92% in radial, tangential, and vertical directions when foamed concrete was used, and the vibrations at the same point were reduced by 53%, 32%, and 59% when the “tube assembly” was applied, respectively. Therefore, remarkable vibration mitigation was achieved in both cases to enhance the resilience of the “cooling tower-soil-containment” system against the secondary disaster.

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