Wind load characteristics of large radio telescope

Fully-steerable radio telescope rotates in two directions during its operation which results in different kinds of upwind postures and complex wind load distributions on its reflector. In order to get the wind load distribution and obtain the corresponding wind load of the reflector structure, the 110 m (F/D=0.3) telescope was chose to be built in Xinjiang. First, the computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT was used for its average surface pressure distribution simulation and the corresponding wind tunnel tests were conducted to verify the validity of CFD simulations on the average surface pressure distribution of the reflector. By comparing the numerical simulation and experimental results, the surface wind load characteristics of the rotating parabolic reflector were revealed. Subsequently, the wind load characteristics were analyzed numerically for the change of its directions for several typical radio telescope structures and the results were given for different apertures, different focal ratios. The results provide valuable reference for similar structure in its wind resistant design.