Research of Curve Fitting Method on the Measured Settlement of Tanks

Abstract

The settlement data of oil storage tanks made of steel are measured by the measurement points located around the base of the tank wall. The measured settlement data need to be curve fitted in order to reflect the settlement distribution around the whole tank wall base. Considering about the disadvantage of measured settlement data treatment methods on tanks in current standards, an optimization method of curve fitting on the measured settlement data is presented. The Fourier series expansion is used to analyze the measured settlement data, the fitting curves and mean square error according to different order are obtained. The fitting curve with minimum mean square error is selected as the most appropriate one that reflects the actual displacement of the tank base. The optimization method of curve fitting present is applied to analyze the measured settlement data obtained from the floating roof tank and the fixed roof tank. Results show that different effects can be obtained with different order of the fitting curve. Curve fitting referring to different order is necessary to the measured settlement data in actual engineering in order to find the most appropriate one that reflects the real tank base displacement distribution.