Applicability of BSS Approach to Solar Chimneys

BSS (Buckling Stress States)-Approach had been developed in the 1970’s and 1980’s by the author at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, for the preliminary design of reinforced concrete natural draught cooling tower shells. Because of their geometry which is rather cylindrical than hyberboloidal and because of their extreme dimensions, reinforced concrete chimneys needed to make use of solar energy in power plants are thin shells afflicted with the buckling problem especially locally, much more than natural draught cooling tower shells. The question now is either the BSS Approach is still applicable or not to solar chimneys, and how the research to solve the stability problem of these shells has to be designed. For this end diverse effects pertinent to the problem are described and discussed to develop suggestions for the research directed to a practice oriented approach similar to BSS. It turns out that BSS approach can be extended so as to include solar chimneys, provided that appropriate experimental research is carried out.