Horizontal saddle-supported storage vessels: A parametric study of plastic collapse loads

Previous work by the present authors compared various theoretical methods with simple experiments for the plastic collapse load on end supported vessels loaded centrally by rigid saddles. It was found that the best agreement was obtained by using an elastic-plastic finite element analysis approach. In the present paper the elastic-plastic method has been used to examine the effect of various geometric parameters on the collapse load. A symmetrical model which replicated the geometric features of the experiments can be used to give an indication of the effect of specific isolated geometric variables but for others and for the purposes of undertaking a full parametric survey the model was modified to reflect an actual twin saddle supported vessel