numerical analysis of soil geotechnical parameters on performance of concrete cooling towers by finite element method (case study: of mashhad cooling towers)

nowadays, more and more ring footings are used in practice special for axi-symmetric structures. in this paper, a numerical analysis was performed using plaxis software for calculating bearing capacity and settlement of ring footing. the parameters used in this analysis are the results of geotechnical studies of mashhad cooling tower. the analysis was carried out using mohr-coulomb’s criterion for soil. the bearing capacity was calculated for smooth and rough ring footing and then the bearing capacity factors were calculated. the analysis indicated that the bearing capacity of rough ring footing is obviously higher than the bearing capacity of smooth footing. finally, the results were compared with those available in the literature.