Nonlinear seismic response of a partially-filled rectangular liquid tank with a submerged block

Abstract

The seismic response of partially-filled two-dimensional rigid rectangular liquid tanks with a bottom-mounted submerged block is numerically simulated. The Galerkin-weighted-residual based finite element method (FEM) is used for solving the governing Laplace equation with fully nonlinear free surface boundary conditions and also for velocity recovery. Based on the mixed Eulerian–Lagrangian (MEL) method, a fourth order explicit Runge–Kutta scheme is used for the time-stepping integration of free surface boundary conditions. A cubic-spline fitted regridding technique is used at every time step to eliminate possible numerical instabilities on account of Lagrangian node induced mesh distortion. An artificial surface damping term is used to mimic the viscosity induced damping. Three different earthquake motions characterized on the basis of low, intermediate and high frequency contents are used to study the effect of frequency content on the nonlinear dynamic response of this tank-liquid-submerged block system. The effect of the submerged block on the impulsive and convective response components of the hydrodynamic forces manifested in terms of base shear, overturning base moment and pressure distribution along the tank wall as well as the block wall has been quantified vis-a-vis frequency content of ground motions. It is observed that the convective response of this tank-liquid system is highly sensitive to the frequency content of the ground motion.