Experimental Evaluation of the Seismic Response of a Rooftop-Mounted Cooling Tower

Abstract

This paper examines the seismic response of a cooling tower supported on four isolation/restraint (I/R) mounts. The tower was mounted on the roof of a five-story reinforced concrete building built at full-scale and tested on the large outdoor unidirectional shake table at the University of California, San Diego. The building was tested in two phases: (1) base-isolated and (2) fixed-base. In each phase, the building was subjected to six earthquake input ground motions reproduced by the shake table. In this paper, the measured response of the cooling tower and its supporting system are analyzed and compared to current code provisions.