Static and Dynamic Buckling of Cylindrical Tanks

Abstract

In this paper the static and dynamic buckling of cylindrical storage tanks is studied. The nonlinear static buckling analysis was performed on the tank with height to diameter (H/D) ratio of 2.0 and diameter to thickness (D/t) ratio of 960 when it is subjected to a horizontal shear force at the top. Then three different geometries of tanks were analyzed for dynamic buckling when subjected to the El Centro earthquake at the base of the tanks. The procedure by Budiansky and Roth was used to identify the dynamic buckling load for empty and liquid filled tanks up to 90% of their depth. It is noted that that the tanks fail by static buckling when they are empty, whereas the tanks fail by dynamic buckling when they have liquid in them because of added mass. The empty tanks do not buckle under the action of earthquake load. The peak ground accelerations (PGA) for the three models of liquid filled tanks studied here are 0.25g, 0.39g, and 1.50 g.