Abstract: In order to study the buckling and the critical wind speed of the natural draft cooling tower under wind loads, three scale models with different wall thicknesses are built by the 3D printing and then tested in the wind tunnel. The experimental results are compared with those obtained by the finite element method. The results show that the buckling occurs in the elastic region and the ratio of the wall thickness to the throat radius is the key parameter for the critical load. The critical wind pressures obtained by experiments are close to those designed by the current standards, which are about 1/4 of the results obtained by the finite element method, which shows that the design of the wall thickness based on the stability of the cooling tower in the current standard is conservative.