The article examines the role of dynamic collapse modelling for reinforced concrete structures exposed to emergency dynamic loads. The authors reviewed methodological approaches to test simulation of emergency loads applied to reinforced concrete structures with the aim to consider the scale effects revealed in manufacturing of test models of reinforced concrete structures. The comparative analysis is based on the examples of the authors’ previous computational and experimental investigations of the reinforced concrete building frames made of cast-in-situ reinforced concrete. The article determines regularities in the impact of physical and geometric similarities applicable to models and full-scale specimens. The obtained results can become a base for a mathematical description of the impact produced by scale effects that shall be considered in simulation of emergency dynamic loads for the given structures.

This paper presents the exact solution for the problem of the added masses of fluid, oscillating inside a cylindrical tank. A thin smooth cylindrical shell of finite length, filled with the ideal incompressible fluid that is subjected to transient dynamic load (it may be an earthquake, air explosion impact, etc.), is taken as a design model. In this case, the shell of a tank becomes a part of the oscillating process along with the fluid stored inside. The shell bending equation (stipulated by the membrane theory of shells) is taken as a design model for this case. In this equation, the shell deflection is expanded into Fourier series by oscillation modes, and the velocity potential takes the form of the Laplace’s equation. Fluid’s inertial reaction to the shell motion is covered by the shallow water theory, which is specified by the boundary free surface conditions and the influence of the tank hard bottom. These mathematical expressions of the shell response to the external transient impact are solved by the Bubnov–Galerkin method with the transformation of the initial relations into a system of ordinary differential equations, which include expressions for determining added masses of fluid by oscillation modes of the elastic shell.

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