Seismic Response of a Cylindrical Water Storage Tank of Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

It is important in the confirmation of the safety of the nuclear power plant to clarify the response behavior of a vertical cylindrical water storage tank under seismic motion. When a vertical cylindrical tank is shaken by a large earthquake, deformation of side shell due to the elephant foot buckling, the oval vibration etc. may occur. The occurrence of those deformations depends on materials, shapes, stored water level and time history of seismic motion. Then, response behavior was obtained for a condensate storage tank (CST) model under large seismic motion such as standard earthquake Ss multiplied by 2 with the elastic-plastic finite element calculation. In this calculation, dynamic water pressure and elastic-plastic characteristics of the material were taken into account. In this case, the elephant foot bulge did not occur but the oval vibration of side shell became dominant. Based on the result, we estimated the structural integrity of the tank.