Comparative Performance of Elevated Isolated Liquid Storage Tanks (With Shaft Staging)

Abstract

Liquid storage tanks are important components of lifeline and industrial facilities. They are critical elements in water supply scheme and fire fighting system, and extensively used for storage and processing of variety of liquid like material such as petroleum product, liquefied natural gas, chemical fluid and wastage of different forms. In this paper, the seismic response of base isolated cylindrical liquid storage tanks is investigated under real earthquake ground motion. The isolation systems considered is elastomeric bearings (without lead core), the specific objectives of the study are to carry out the comparative performance of the tanks with isolation and without isolation (i.e. Fixed tanks) also to investigate the response of the tanks for varying capacity with varying heights. For this study forty tanks of varying heights such as 8m,10m,11m,11.5m,12.5m,14m,16m with varying capacities of 500kl,265kl,200kl,100kl,50kl are considered. For this a time history analysis has been carried out by using a three time history of varying magnitude with varying peak ground acceleration. It is observed that the base shear of elevated liquid storage tanks supported on shaft is significantly reduced due to isolation. The drift of the tank relation to base of shaft is also significantly reduced due to isolation. The earthquake response of isolated short tanks is relatively more, i.e. Isolation is not effective for stiffer shafts, and however in general, the effectiveness of base isolation is achieved for tall tanks. Although the effectiveness of seismic isolation increases with the increase of bearing flexibility and damping these properties needs to be modified for desired response.