The Failure of Oil Storage Tanks and Their Control

The paper discusses of some results of flexible footings and their models behaviour in the case of loading-unloading cycles applied to them. The revealed effects have been used to explain the causes of some tanks failures. It has been shown that one of the possible causes is the difference between the displacements of the tank bottom and soil under it following unloading and subsequent loading. A simple technique has been proposed to prevent the failures that can be easily applied when constructing the tanks. The application of the technique both eliminates the causes of the failures and greatly reduces the deflections of the tank\u27s bottom thus making it possible to avoid materials and labour intensive footings