See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/314413123

Seismic analysis of liquid storage tanks

Article  in  The Journal of Engineering · June 2011

CITATIONS READS

5 1,629

1 author:

Abdulmuttalib Said
University of Baghdad
67 PUBLICATIONS   50 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

structural optimization View project

two way slab system View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Abdulmuttalib Said on 09 March 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Number 3 Volume 17 June 2011 Journal of Engineering

SEISMIC ANALYSIS OF LIQUID STORAGE TANKS

Dr. AbdulMuttalib I. Said

Civil Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad

Email: [email protected]

Ammar A. AbdulMajeed
Civil Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Baghdad.

ABSTRACT
This study presents an idealization scheme for the analysis of rectangular storage tanks acted upon by
earthquake excitations. Above and below ground tank, uses have been considered. A linear three-
dimensional finite element analysis has been used to predict the natural frequencies. Analysis parameters are
the ratio of height to length of the tank, the type of soil, level of water in the tank, and also the wall
thickness. The results for top displacement and axial force components for a full tankabove ground case have
values greater than those in half- full (31%) and empty tank cases (75%). At the opposite of that, the
underground tank demonstrates that top displacement and axial force components for an empty tank case
have values greater than those in half- full (19%) and full tank cases (40%). The base shear for above ground
tank case has values greater than those in underground tank cases (19% to 37%). The shear base for soil type
2 is greater than those in soil type 1(17% to 28%).

Key words: Seismic analysis, viscous dampers, rectangular tanks, finite element models, fluid-structure-soil
interaction, time history, free vibration, ANSYS.

‫الخالصة‬
‫ األول ى تك ون فيھ ا الخزان ات مدفون ة بش كل كام ل‬،‫تتضمن الدراسة تحليل الخزانات المستطيلة المعرضة الى ھزات أرضية بح التين‬
‫أس تخدم التحلي ل الخط ي ثالث ي االبع اد بطريق ة العناص ر المح ددة‬.‫تحت االرض والحالة الثانية تكون الخزانات فيھا فوق مس توى س طح االرض‬
‫لغرض تحري عالقة كل من األھتزاز الطبيعي ونسبة ارتفاع الجدران من حيث تغير نوع التربة وكمية الماء الموجودة ب الخزان وك ذلك عالقت ة‬
‫ لھ ا ق يم اعظ م م ن الحال ة النص ف ممل ؤه‬،‫ايضا بأختالف سمك الجدران واألزاحة العليا والقوه المحورية لحالة الخزان ف وق االرض وھ و ممل ؤ‬
‫ بعكس ذلك تكون األزاحة العليا والقوة المحورية لحال ة الخ زان الم دفون اعظ م وھ و ف ارغ‬.‫ اعظم من الحالة الفارغة‬%٧٥ ‫ وبنسبة‬%٣١ ‫بنسبة‬
‫ ق وة الق ص عن د االس اس لحال ة الخ زان ف وق س طح االرض لھ ا ق يم‬.‫ أعظم من الحاله المملؤه‬%٤٠ ‫ وبنسبة‬%١٩ ‫من ماھو نصف مملؤ بنسبة‬
‫ )الترب ة الض عيفة( تك ون اعظ م‬٢ ‫ قوة القص عند االساس في حالة الترب ة رق م‬.(%٣٧ ‫ الى‬%١٩) ‫اعظم من حالة الخزان تحت االرض بنسبة‬
.(%٢٨ ‫ الى‬%١٧) ‫ بنسبة‬١‫من حالة التربة رقم‬

 
Dr. AbdulMuttalib I. Said Seismic Analysis Of Liquid Storage Tanks
Ammar A. AbdulMajeed

 
1. INTRODUCTION
Damages of storage tanks due to recent
earthquakes have been extensively studied by
(Jennings 1971, Hanson 1973, and Monos and
Clough 1985). These tanks are mainly steel tanks
whose failure modes are edge effects in the form
of elephant foot buckling at the base. (Housner
1957) is the first who considered the
hydrodynamic pressure distribution developed in
rigid tanks during horizontal base excitation. He
formulated a dynamic model for estimating the
liquid response in seismically excited rigid,
rectangular and circular tanks. The effect due to
shell flexibility is later incorporated in the model
by (Veletsos and Yang 1976), (Nash et al. 1978),
(Haroun and Housner 1980). (Haroun and Tayel
1984) have investigated the effect of soil-structure Plate (1) Rectangular storage tank and
interaction. (Veletsos and Tang 1986) and (Luft coordinate system
1984) have considered the effect of vertical
excitation on the hydrodynamic pressures.
3. DESCRIPTION OF STRUCTURE
(Haroun and Chen 1989) have investigated the
nonlinear sloshing behavior in rectangular tanks
The structure analyzed in the present study,
by considering large amplitude sloshing. The
shown in Plate (1), is a typical rectangular storage
finite element analysis of the liquid-tank system is
tank with a volume of 767.6m3. The contained
studied by (Haroun and Housner 1981). Several
liquid is assumed to be water with the density of
studies were also carried out to investigate that
10kN/m3, Ew= 2.0684 x109 kN/m2 and Viscosity
dynamic interaction between deformable wall of
= 1.2379 x10-12kN/m.s, υw= 0.19. The tank has a
the tank and the liquid using finite element
length of 12.6m, a width 6.3m, a height 12.6m
analysis. (ASCE 1984) comprehensively discusses
and a shell thickness of 0.45m and is constructed
the effect of fluid-structure interaction on the
using concrete with Ec= 20x 106kN/m2, υc= 0.15
hydrodynamic pressures and (ASCE 1981)
and ρc= 24kN/m3. The damping coefficient of the
provides excellent guidelines for the analysis and
overall structure has been assumed equal to 5%.
design of liquid storage structures.
The soil has been chosen, according to (Prakash
2. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS 1981) classification, four different models of soil
types are considered. The four types of soil are
The assumptions introduced in the present classified in Table (1).
analysis are as follows: Table (1) Parametric studies of soil type
Mass Shear
a. The tank is symmetric about x-axis and z-axis No. Soil type density modules
in terms of geometry. kN.s2/m4 kN /m2
b. The material of the tank is linearly elastic, Loess at
isotropic and homogeneous. 1 natural 1.67 112892
c. The contained liquid is inviscid, incompressible moisture
and in a non-rotational motion, within vessels
Medium-
having no net flow rate
2 sized 1.8 58320
d. The base is connected rigidly to the tank wall.
gravel
e. The soil medium is represented as a system of
Medium-
closely spaced independent linear springs,
3 grained 1.65 42240
masses and dashpots.
sand
f. The seismic effect is parallel to the z-axis and
perpendicular to the x-axis Fine-
4 grained 1.65 19965
sand

 
 Number 3 Volume 17 June 2011 Journal of Engineering

 
4. SEISMIC GROUND EXCITATION Table (2) Soil properties of all concrete models
considered in the analysis
The structure is assumed to be acted upon by a
seismic ground motion, represented by soil soil soil soil
Soil type unit
acceleration whose duration is 31.18sec. A peak type 1 type 2 type 3 type 4
ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.318g have been r m 0.5085 0.5085 0.5085 0.5085
used. A rectangular concrete tank has been Directions Gs kN/m 112892 58320 42240 19965
analyzed due to north-south component El-Centro ૅs - 0.45 0.2 0.3 0.35
Ks kN/m2 417495 148278 122737 62475
earthquake of Fig. (1), the first five seconds were
Vertical Cs kN.s/m 542.0 335.3 305.1 208.4
considered for analyzing the tanks
ms kN.s2/m 0.33 0.36 0.36 0.33
Ks kN/m 346811 159921 123092 59554
Horizontal Cs kN.s/m 298.0 210.1 184.3 122.8
ms kN.s2/m 0.06 0.07 0.07 0.06

6. FINIT ELEMENT MODEL

The numerical analysis of the rectangular storage

tank structure is performed on the basis of
detailed FE model implemented with the help of
the routines available in the ANSYS Finite
Element program (ANSYS 2008), as shown in
Plate (2). The rectangular storage tank is modeled
using 26485 or 19093 element, for the two cases
of tank considered in this work, i.e. the
Figure (1) Accelerogram N-S El Centro underground tank and the tank above ground
earthquake, 18-May-1940 respectively. Four-noded shell elements
(SHELL63) with six DOFs per node are used. The
eight node solid fluid element (FLUID80), with
three DOFs per node, has been chosen to model
5 .SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION the incompressible fluid content. A total of 4368
or 8736 FLUID80 elements are used, respectively,
According to (Clough 2003), the soil-structure for the three levels of water tank is considered in
interaction (SSI) effects on the dynamic response this work, i.e. empty, half full and full. In order to
of a rectangular tank can be taken into account by satisfy the continuity conditions between the fluid
modeling each of the physical degrees-of and solid media at the rectangular tank boundary,
freedom, i.e .horizontal and vertical, of the the coincident nodes of the fluid and shell
surrounding soil system as discrete system with elements are constrained to be coupled in the
six degrees-of-freedom. The constants of all the direction normal to the interface, while relative
discrete elements are computed as listed in movements are allowed to occur in the tangential
Table(2) directions. The uniaxial “tension only” behavior
of the braces is simulated by means of the 3-D
spar elements LINK10, which feature a bilinear
stiffness matrix, i.e. the stiffness is removed if the
element goes into compression. The viscous fluid
damper devices are modeled using the 1-D non-
linear damper elements COMBIN37. Finally,
concentrated mass elements (MASS21) and linear
spring-damper elements (COMBIN14) are used to
model the discrete elements for the simulation of
soil-structure interaction. The above FEM
rectangular tank model is numerically analyzed by
means of a full transient linear analysis. The

 
Dr. AbdulMuttalib I. Said Seismic Analysis Of Liquid Storage Tanks
Ammar A. AbdulMajeed

 
governing equations of motion can be expressed For this purpose, two cases of storage
in matrix form as (Chopra 1996) tanks are considered, above ground tank and
buried tank, for each case, both empty and
(1) completely full tanks. The results of natural
frequencies are given in Fig.(2) and (3) for empty
with [M], and being the mass, and completely full tanks, resting on four different
types of soil. It is observed that as the soil
damping and stiffness matrices of the structure, becomes weaker (having low shear modules
respectively, an influence coefficient matrix, (Gs)), natural frequencies become less (soil type
and the ground acceleration. Eq. (1) is No.4).
integrated directly in time using the Newmark-β
method.

Above ground

Plat (2) Finite element rectangular tank model

7 .NUMERICAL STUDY
Seismic response of the rectangular liquid storage
tank above ground and underground is
investigated by performing two types of analyses:
(i) modal analysis and (ii) time domain analysis.
The problem is solved for four types of soil.

7.1 Modal Analysis

The first step in the dynamic analysis of
any structural system is to determine the free Underground
vibration characteristic natural frequencies and
mode shapes, which are important in calculating Figure (2) Fundamental natural frequencies
the seismic response of the liquid storage tanks. versus aspect ratio (Ht/lx) variation of empty
The Block Lanczos method is used in ANSYS for tank
the Eigenvalue and Eigenvector extractions
tocalculate natural frequencies including the fluid
modes (Hallquist 1998).

7.1.1 Effect of Tank Height to Length Ratio

Variation

 
 Number 3 Volume 17 June 2011 Journal of Engineering

Above ground

Above ground

Underground

Figure (3) Fundamental natural frequencies

versus aspect ratio (Ht/lx) variation of full tank

Comparing the results between the two cases of

tanks (above ground and buried tank), it has been Underground
found that the buried tank has natural frequencies Figure (4) Fundamental natural frequencies
less than the tank above ground, because the mass versus height of fluid ratio (HL/Ht)
of the tank will increase causing reduction in the
natural frequencies. It is also noticed, that the
natural frequencies of the empty tank are much It can be observed from these tables and plots
larger than those of the full tanks regardless of the that, as the level of fluid in the tank increases, the
type of soil. natural frequencies decrease for both cases of
tanks and for all four types of the soil. This
behavior is obvious since the mass of the structure
7.1.2 Effect of Liquid Height to Tank system increases with the level of fluid.
Length Ratio Variation
7.1.3 Effect of Wall Thickness Variation
To demonstrate the effect of liquid height
variation (HL/Ht), two cases of the tanks (the tank To demonstrate the effect of wall thickness
above ground and buried tank) were considered variation, empty tank and completely full tank, are
for this purpose. The resulting natural frequencies studied for the free vibration characteristics with
are given in Fig.(4) for above ground and buried wall thickness varies from 450mm to 1350mm for
tanks respectively. a tank resting on soil type 1, and also for two
cases (above ground and buried tank).

 
Dr. AbdulMuttalib I. Said Seismic Analysis Of Liquid Storage Tanks
Ammar A. AbdulMajeed

Above ground

Underground

Figure (6) Effect of thickness variation on

natural frequencies of full tank

The resulting natural frequencies are given

in Fig.(5) and (6). It can be seen clearly from
these results that, the natural frequencies increase
when the thickness of the wall increases without
changing the height of the tank (the wall stiffness
increases with increasing its thickness

7.2 Time Domain Analysis

Underground
A time domain analysis using the first five
Figure (5) Effect of thickness variation on
seconds of the north-south component of the 1940
natural frequencies of empty tank El Centro earthquake was used for the linear
elastic model. Peak ground acceleration values
were adjusted to 0.318g. Model time history
analysis under linear elastic, small deformation
assumptions included evaluation of water surface
profiles top displacements, axial force, and
resulting base shear. The following sections
summarize results.The four sets of figures drawn
for the different two types of surrounding soil are
assumed (soil type 1, and 2), with different levels
of water (full, half –full, and empty tank) are
considered, as shown in Figs.((7) – (10)). The
plots are presented for earthquake response of the
rectangular tank above ground demonstrate that
top displacement and axial force components for a
full tank case have values greater than those in
half- full (31%) and empty tank cases (75%).
While the case of underground rectangular tank
demonstrate that top displacement and axial force
Above ground components for an empty tank case have values

 
 Number 3 Volume 17 June 2011 Journal of Engineering

 
greater than those in half- full (19%) and full tank
cases (40%).It is also interesting to notice that the
base shear for the above the ground tank case
have values greater than those in underground
tank cases (19% to 37%). The shear base for soil
type 2 is greater than those in soil type 1(17% to
28%). It is found that the surrounding soil type
has a significant influence on the tank response, as
shown in Fig.(11) and (12).

Soil type 1

Soil type 1

Soil type 2
Figure (8) Plots of the top displacement-versus
wall height ratio above the base (buried tank)

Soil type 2

Figure (7) Plots of the top displacement-versus

wall height ratio above the base (tank above
ground)

 
Dr. AbdulMuttalib I. Said Seismic Analysis Of Liquid Storage Tanks
Ammar A. AbdulMajeed

 
Soile type1

Soil type1 Soil type 2

Figure (10) Axial Force- wall height ratio for
relationships above the base in long wall

Soil type 1
Soil type 2
Figure (9) Axial Force- wall height ratio for
relationships above the base in long wall

Soil type 2

Figure (11) Plots of base shear-height of water

(tank above ground)

 
 Number 3 Volume 17 June 2011 Journal of Engineering

8. CONCLUSIONS
1- Variations of the properties of
surrounding soil medium are found to
have an important influence on the free
and forced vibrational response (seismic
excitation) of the storage tanks.
2- The frequencies in the above ground tank
are greater than those for buried tank
nearly (26% to 27%), and the frequencies
in soil type 1 (stiff soil) case have values
greater than those in type 2 (weaker soil)
nearly (29% to 31%).
3- The shear base for above ground tank
have values greater than those in
underground tank by ratio ranging
Soil type 1 between 19% and 37%, The shear base
for soil type 2 is greater than those in soil
type 1 by a ratio ranging between 17%
and 28%. It is found that the surrounding
soil type has a significant influence on the
tank response. It is also found that, the
natural frequency is proportional to the
wall thickness of the tank. This behavior
is related to the fact that the stiffness of a
tank is a function of its wall thickness

Soil type 2
Figure (12) Plots of base shear-height of water
(buried tank)

 
 Dr. AbdulMuttalib I. Said Seismic Analysis Of Liquid Storage Tanks
Ammar A. AbdulMajeed

9. REFERENCES
 Haroun, M. A., and Tayel, M. A.,
 ANSYS Manual, Version 11. (2008). (1985), “Axisymmetric Vibration of
Tank-Analytical and Numerical”,
 ASCE, American Society of Civil Journal of Engineering Mechanics,
Engineering, (1984), “Fluid- ASCE, vol.111, No.3, pp. 329-358.
Structure Interaction during Seismic
Excitation,” Report by the  Housner, G. W. (1957), “Dynamic
Committee on Seismic Analysis. pressures on accelerated fluid
containers”, Bull. Seism. Soc.,
 ASCE, American Society of Civil America, 47, 15- 35.
Engineers (1981),
 Jennings, P.C. (1971), “Engineering
 Chopra, A. K., (1996), “Dynamics of features of the San Fernando
Structures (Theory and Applications earthquake, Report EERL 71-02,
to Earthquake Engineering)”, California Institute of Technology.
Prentice-Hill.
 Luft, R. W., (1984), “Vertical
 Clough R. W., and Penzien, J., accelerations in prestressed concrete
(2003), “Dynamics of Structures”, tanks”, Journal of Structural
Third Edition Computers and Engineering, ASCE, Vol. 110, No. 4,
Structures, Inc. 706-714.

 Hallquist, John O., (1998), “LS-  Manos, G.C. and Clough, R.W.
DYNA Theoretical Manual”, (1985), “Tank damage during the
Livermore Software Technology may 1983 Coalinga earthquake”,
Corporation. Earthquake Engineering in Structural
Dynamics, 13, 449-466.
 Hanson, R.D., (1973), “Behavior of
liquid storage tanks”, Report No.  Nash, W.A., Balendra, T., Shaaban,
EERL 80-04, Caltech S.H. and Mouzakis, T. (1978),
. “Finite element analysis of seismic
 Haroun, M. A. and Chen, W., (1989), response of cylindrical tanks”, ASCE
“Seismic large amplitude liquid Convention and Exposition, Preprint
sloshing theory”, Seismic 3315, Chicago, Illinois.
Engineering Structures Congress,
San Francisco, 418-427.  Prakash, S., (1981), “Soil
Dynamics”, McGraw-Hill.
 Haroun, M. A. and Housner, G. W.
(1980), “A Procedure for seismic  Veletsos, A.S. and Tang, Y. (1986),
design of liquid storage tanks”, “Dynamics of vertically excited
Earthquake Engineering Research liquid storage tanks”, Journal of
Lab. Report, Caltech, October Structural Engg. ASCE, 112, June,
1228-1246.
 Haroun, M. A. and Housner, G. W.,  Veletsos, A.S. and Yang, J.Y.
(1981), “Seismic design of liquid (1976), “Dynamics of fixed-base
storage tanks”, Journal of Technical liquid storage tanks”, U.S.-Japan
Councils of ASCE, Vol. 107, No. Seminar for Earthquake Engineering
TC1, 191-207. Research, Tokyo, Japan.

 
View publication stats