TP22-21: FEM Study Concept Study on the Anisotropic Mechanical Behavior of Cooling Tower Film Fills

Cooling tower fills made from foils are very anisotropic in their mechanical behaviour. That means, their deformation and load behaviour is not identical in all spatial directions.
If you want to mechanically model fill blocks inside a cooling tower at an aggregated level, you have to take this anisotropic behaviour into account. The reasons for this are not so much due to the material itself but to the fill design.

In this FEM concept study generalized fill designs are used to explore some of the influences of the typical fill parameters on the anisotropy of the overall block.

The most prominent parameters for the anisotropy are the 3D Poisson’s ratios. They are extremely complicated to measure in testing and therefore their behaviour is the focus of this study.