Tank damage during the may 1983 coalinga earthquake

Abstract

SUMMARYThe magnitude M = 6.5 Coalinga earthquake of 2 May 1983 caused intense ground shaking throughout the epicentral region. Unanchored cylindrical ground supported tanks located at six sites within this oil producing area were damaged; damages included elephant's foot buckling at the base of three moderate sized tanks, joint rupture and top shell buckling in one large old rivetted tank, bottom plate rupture of a relatively new welded tank and damage to the floating roofs of 11 tanks. Also oil spilled over the top of many tanks and secondary damages occurred in pipe connections, ladders, etc.In this paper an estimate is made of the intensity of ground motion at each of the tank sites, based on strong motion records made during the main shock and the strongest aftershock. Then response parameters specified by current codes are correlated with the damages observed at each tank site. Based on this comparison, it is concluded that current US. practice under-estimates the sloshing response of tanks with floating roofs and does not adequately address the uplifting mechanism of unanchored ground supported tanks.

Seismic analysis of base-isolated liquid storage tanks

“…[11,13]. The tank wall is considered of steel with modulus of elasticity, E ¼ 200 MPa and mass density, r s ¼ 7900 kg=m 3 : Further, the response of isolated liquid storage tank is studied with fixed value of isolation period, i.e., T b ¼ 2 s as recommended in Ref. [8] for base-isolated structures.…”

“…Past earthquakes have demonstrated the seismic vulnerability of tanks and the damage occurred in the form of buckling of tank wall due to excessive development of compressive stresses, failure of piping systems and uplift of anchorage system [1][2][3][4]. The seismic behavior of liquid storage tanks is highly complex due to liquidstructure interaction leading to a tedious design procedure from earthquake-resistant design point of view.…”

An innovative earthquake isolation system using fibre reinforced rubber bearings

“…In particular, tanks are amongst the most critical installations and therefore, the seismic isolation of these structures is of high importance in order to mitigate the consequences of earthquake damage to those plants. Some examples of the damage suffered by tanks in past earthquakes can be found in [18][19][20].…”

Demand-Based Optimal Design of Storage Tank with Inerter System

“…Storage tanks are designed in a wide range of capacity sizes ranging from small to large [1]. The vulnerability of tanks during earthquakes has been demonstrated in previous studies [2][3][4][5][6]. Based on the observations of several other researchers [7][8][9][10], the failure modes of tank damage can be divided into several types, such as buckling of tank walls, failure of link facilities, spillover of stored liquid, and uplifting of anchorage systems.…”