Abstract: So far, researches on preheater tower structures under the action of severe earthquakes in our country are not enough and no specification or code can be used as the basis for its design. Taking the constructions of the preheater tower structures in high seismic areas and its characteristics into consideration, it's necessary to conduct in-depth researches about the seismic performance of the preheater tower. This paper takes a concrete-filled steel tube frame which works as preheater tower structure of a 5 000 t/d NSP cement production line located in a 9 degree seismic fortification area as a research object, and study the elastic-plastic time history analysis under the seismic action with the finite element software LS-DYNA. The results show that the structure system has good seismic behaviour; Under severe earthquake, the deformation of structure can meet the requirements of the relevant specification; Structural seismic performance is with large redundancy and the influence of the vertical earthquake action to the structure cannot be neglected. At last, the optimization of the structure is studied.
