Study on the Predictive Evaluation Method of Nonlinear Sloshing Wave Crest Impact Load on the Roof of Cylindrical Tanks

Abstract

Abstract When cylindrical tanks installed on the ground, such as oil tanks and liquid storage tanks, receive strong seismic waves, including the long-period component, motion of the free liquid surface inside the tank called sloshing may occur. If high-amplitude sloshing occurs and the waves collide with the tank roof, it may lead to accidents such as damage of the tank roof or outflow of internal liquid of the tank. Therefore, it is important to predict the wave height of sloshing generated by earthquake motion. Sloshing is a type of vibration of free liquid surface, and if the sloshing wave height is small, it can be approximated with a linear vibration model. In this case, the velocity-response-spectrum method using velocity potential can estimate the sloshing wave height under earthquake motion. However, if the sloshing wave height increases, the sloshing becomes nonlinear, and necessary to evaluate the wave height using other methods such as numerical analysis. Design earthquake magnitude levels in Japan tend to increase in recent years, long-period components of earthquake wave which act on the sloshing wave height also increase instead of introducing seismic isolation mechanisms. To evaluate sloshing wave crest impact load acting on the roof of a tank, there are few applications which quantitatively evaluated the crest impact load of nonlinear sloshing. To construct a simple technique to evaluate the sloshing impact load considering the nonlinear sloshing wave height which acts on a flat roof of cylindrical tanks, it is proposed that flow diagram of evaluating the sloshing impact load which newly took into consideration the nonlinearity of sloshing and the dynamic amplification factor. The applicability of the technique was verified with the shaking table tests results for cylindrical tank and flow-analysis results.