Review of seismic studies of liquid storage tanks

Abstract

The academic research works about liquid storage tanks are reviewed for the purpose of providing valuable reference to the engineering practice on their aseismic design. A summary of the performance of tanks during past earthquakes is described in this paper. Next, the seismic response of tanks under unidirectional earthquake is reported, supplemented with the dynamic response under multidirectional motions. Then, researches on the influence of soil-structure interaction are brought out to help modify the seismic design approach of tanks in different areas with variable properties of soils. Afterwards, base isolation systems are reported to demonstrate their effectiveness for the earthquake-resistant design of liquid storage tanks. Further, researches about the liquid-structure interaction are reviewed with description of simplified models and numerical analytical methods, some of which consider the elastic effect of tank walls. Moreover, the liquid sloshing phenomenon on the hydrodynamic behaviors of tanks is presented by various algorithms including grid-based and meshfree method. And then the impact of baffles in changing the dynamic characteristics of the liquid-structure system is raised, which shows the energy dissipation by the vortex motion of liquid. In addition, uplifting effect is given to enhance the understanding on the capacity of unanchored tanks and some assessment of their development. At last, the concluding remarks and the aspects of extended research in the field of liquid storage tanks under seismic loads are provided, emphasizing the thermal stress analysis, the replaceable system for base isolation, the liquid-solid interaction and dynamic responses with stochastic excitations.