In this paper, a mesh generation and mesh refinement procedure for adaptive finite element (FE) analyses of real-life surface structures is proposed. For mesh generation, the advancing front method (AFM) is employed. FE meshes of curved structures are generated in the respective 2D parametric space of the structure. Thereafter, the 2D mesh is mapped onto the middle surface of the structure. For mesh refinement, two different modes, namely uniform and adaptive mesh refinement, are considered. Remeshing in the context of adaptive mesh refinement is controlled by the spatial distribution of the estimated error of the FE results. Depending on this distribution. remeshing may result in a partial increase and decrease, respectively, of the element size. In contrast to adaptive mesh refinement, uniform mesh refinement is characterized by a reduction of the element size in the entire domain. The different refinement strategies are applied to ultimate load analysis of a retrofitted cooling tower. The influence of the underlying FE discretization on the numerical results is investigated.

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