• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제47권5호
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• pp.599-622
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• 2013

Seismic response of two dimensional liquid tanks is numerically simulated using fully nonlinear velocity potential theory. Galerkin-weighted-residual based finite element method is used for solving the governing Laplace equation with fully nonlinear free surface boundary conditions and also for velocity recovery. Based on mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian (MEL) method, fourth order explicit Runge-Kutta scheme is used for time integration of free surface boundary conditions. A cubic-spline fitted regridding technique is used at every time step to eliminate possible numerical instabilities on account of Lagrangian node induced mesh distortion. An artificial surface damping term is used which mimics the viscosity induced damping and brings in numerical stability. Four earthquake motions have been suitably selected to study the effect of frequency content on the dynamic response of tank-liquid system. The nonlinear seismic response vis-a-vis linear response of rectangular liquid tank has been studied. The impulsive and convective components of hydrodynamic forces, e.g., base shear, overturning base moment and pressure distribution on tank-wall are quantified. It is observed that the convective response of tank-liquid system is very much sensitive to the frequency content of the ground motion. Such sensitivity is more pronounced in shallow tanks.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제13권6호
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• pp.615-638
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• 2002

This paper presents a method of seismic analysis for a cylindrical liquid storage structure considering the effects of the interior fluid and exterior soil medium in the frequency domain. The horizontal and rocking motions of the structure are included in this study. The fluid motion is expressed in terms of analytical velocity potential functions, which can be obtained by solving the boundary value problem including the deformed configuration of the structure as well as the sloshing behavior of the fluid. The effect of the fluid is included in the equation of motion as the impulsive added mass and the frequency-dependent convective added mass along the nodes on the wetted boundary of the structure. The structure and the near-field soil medium are represented using the axisymmetric finite elements, while the far-field soil is modeled using dynamic infinite elements. The present method can be applied to the structure embedded in ground as well as on ground, since it models both the soil medium and the structure directly. For the purpose of verification, earthquake response analyses are performed on several cases of liquid tanks on a rigid ground and on a homogeneous elastic half-space. Comparison of the present results with those by other methods shows good agreement. Finally, an application example of a reinforced concrete tank on a horizontally layered soil with a rigid bedrock is presented to demonstrate the importance of the soil-structure interaction effects in the seismic analysis for large liquid storage tanks.