• Effect of periphery radiators arrangement on two side-by-side NDCTs was investigated. • Circular and elliptical periphery radiators arrangements were compared numerically. • Three different layouts of elliptical periphery radiators arrangements were examined. • Oblique elliptical layouts outperform than others at the full range of the studied wind velocities. • Elliptical types of cooling towers improve thermal performance by 17–29.5% at high wind velocity. In the present study, the thermal performance of two side-by-side natural draft dry cooling towers with elliptical radiator arrangement was numerically compared with that of the conventional circular towers under crosswind condition. In addition to the side-by-side configuration of two circular cooling towers, three different layouts of adjacent elliptical towers were investigated, in which the major axis of the elliptical cross-section formed angles of 45°, 90°, and 135° with the wind direction. The results indicated that the presence of an adjacent cooling tower reduced the heat transfer rate of each tower compared with the isolated case. Moreover, the findings showed that all three side-by-side arrangements of elliptical cooling towers exhibited higher thermal efficiency than circular ones at wind velocities of 7 and 10 m/s. Furthermore, the results revealed that, under high wind velocities, the elliptical configurations could enhance the thermal performance by approximately 17% to 29.5% compared to the conventional circular arrangement. Based on the numerical results, the optimal arrangement of elliptical cooling towers depends on the dominant wind direction at the installation site. Detailed flow field analyses demonstrated that the thermal performance variations originated from differences in the rate of the hot air crossing out the rear radiators. These flow characteristics lead to the higher mean temperature gradients across the radiators of elliptical tower at wind velocities of 7 and 10 m/s, resulting in an increased overall heat transfer rate compared to the conventional circular tower.
Goodarzi et al. (2026) studied this question.