• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.130-137
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• 2016

At a brewery, the base plate-to-shell weld seam of a $90-m^3$ vertical cylindrical steel tank failed catastrophically. The 4 ton tank "took off" like a rocket leaving its contents behind, and landed on a van, crushing it. The top of the tank reached a height of 30 m. The internal overpressure responsible for the failure was an estimated 60 kPa. A rupture disc rated at < 50 kPa provided overpressure protection and thus prevented the tank from being covered by the European Pressure Equipment Directive. This safeguard failed and it was later discovered that the rupture disc had been installed upside down. The organizational root cause of this incident may be a fundamental lack of appreciation of the hazards of large volumes of low-pressure compressed air or gas. A contributing factor may be that the standard piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) symbol for a rupture disc may confuse and lead to incorrect installation. Compressed air systems are ubiquitous. The medium is not toxic or flammable. Such systems however, when operated at "slight overpressure" can store a great deal of energy and thus constitute a hazard that ought to be addressed by safety managers.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.42-50
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• 2019

As the industry develops in Korea, the use of hazardous chemicals is increasing rapidly and chemical accidents are increasing accordingly. Most of the chemical accidents are caused by leaks of hazardous chemicals, but there are also accidents in which all the substances are released instantaneously due to sudden high temperature/pressure or defection of the storage tanks. This is called catastrophic failure and its frequency is very low, but consequence is very huge when it occurs. In Korea, there were 15 casualties including three deaths due to catastrophic rupture of water tank in 2013, and 64 instances of failures from 1919 to 2004 worldwide. In case of catastrophic failure, it would be able to overflow outside the bund that reduces the evaporation rate and following consequence. This incident is called overtopping. Overseas, some researchers have been studying the amount of external overflow depending on bund conditions in the event of such an accident. Based on the previous research, this study identified overtopping fraction by condition of bund in accordance with Korea Chemicals Controls Act Using CFD simulation. As a result, as the height increases and the distance to the facility decreases while meeting the minimum standard of the bund capacity, the overtopping effect has decreased. In addition, by identifying the effects of overtopping according to atmospheric conditions, types of materials and shapes of bunds, this study proposes the design of the bund considering the effect of overtopping caused by catastrophic failure with different bund conditions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.523-532
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• 2019

Different types of gas reservoir such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) are among the strategic infrastructures, and have great importance for any government or their private owners. To keep the tank and its contents safe during earthquakes especially if the contents are of hazardous or flammable materials; using seismic protection systems such as base isolator can be considered as an effective solution. However, the major deficiency of this system can be the large deformation in the isolation level which may lead to the failure of bearing system. In this paper, as a solution, the efficacy of an optimally designed combined vibration control system, the combined laminated rubber isolator and rotational friction damper, is investigated to evaluate the enhancement of an existing metal tank response under both far- and near-field earthquakes. Responses like impulsive and convective accelerations, base shear, and sloshing height are studied herein. The probabilistic framework is used to consider the uncertainties in the structural modeling, as well as record-to-record variability. Due to the high calculation cost of probabilistic methods, a simplified structural model is used. By using the Mont-Carlo simulation approach, it is revealed that this combined isolation system is a highly reliable system which provides considerable enhancement in the performance of reservoir, not only leads to the reduction of probability of catastrophic failure of the tank but also decrease the reservoir damage during the earthquake. Moreover, the relative displacement of the isolation level is controlled very well by this combined system.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.97-111
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• 2020

Cylindrical steel tanks are important components of industrial facilities. Their safety becomes a crucial issue since any failure may cause catastrophic consequences. The aim of the paper is to show the results of comprehensive FEM numerical investigation focused on the response of cylindrical steel tanks under mining tremors and moderate earthquakes. The effects of different levels of liquid filling, the influence of non-uniform seismic excitation as well as the aspects of diagnosis of structural damage have been investigated. The results of the modal analysis indicate that the level of liquid filling is really essential in the structural analysis leading to considerable changes in the shapes of vibration modes with a substantial reduction in the natural frequencies when the level of liquid increases. The results of seismic and paraseismic analysis indicate that the filling the tank with liquid leads to the substantial increase in the structural response underground motions. It has also been observed that the peak structural response values under mining tremors and moderate earthquakes can be comparable to each other. Moreover, the consideration of spatial effects related to seismic wave propagation leads to a considerable decrease in the structural response under non-uniform seismic excitation. Finally, the analysis of damage diagnosis in steel tanks shows that different types of damage may induce changes in the free vibration modes and values of natural frequencies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.293-301
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• 2016

Stability of cylindrical liquid storage tanks under seismic excitation could prevent catastrophic disaster of human life and economic loss. Domestic provisions on allowable compressive stress in tank walls to prohibit buckling failure are either incomplete or inconsistent, so foreign specifications such as API 650, BS EN 1998-4:2006 or New Zealand Standards are employed in stability design. In this study, response spectrum analyses are performed for plant tanks having different ratios of height to diameter or diameter to thickness to calculate hydrodynamic pressure on tank walls. Then nonlinear buckling analyses are conducted to estimate magnitude of buckling stress. By comparing analysis results with those from foreign design specifications, appropriate domestic design provisions are suggested.