DAMAGE DUE TO BUCKLING IN ABOVEGROUND STORAGE TANKS

The damage due to buckling in thin-walled, short cylindrical aboveground tanks is discussed in this paper. Various sources of buckling are considered, including wind, earthquake, support settlement and vacuum during emptying of the tank. In all cases the tanks were modeled using finite elements, and the results include the buckling load and associated buckling mode, and the postbuckling equilibrium path. The results have been obtained using the computer packages ABAQUS and ALGOR. Experiments on flexible small-scale tanks with settlement of the supports on a sector of the foundation were conducted. Also, wind tunnel tests were carried out on rigid tanks with and without a roof to evaluate the pressure distribution due to wind