17-27: Non-Destructive Evaluation of Structural Elements of Cooling Towers

Wood, steel, and concrete have been used as structural materials in cooling towers for decades. When evaluations needed to be done to understand the structural integrity of the materials used after years of service of the towers, specialized procedures were developed to characterize the condition of different materials. These ranged from visual to in situ tests using various techniques for different materials. This paper describes some of the non-destructive testing techniques used for structural elements in cooling towers with some case histories.