A risk-targeted seismic performance assessment of elephant-foot buckling in walls of unanchored steel storage tanks

Vasquez Munoz, Luz Elizabeth (author), Dolšek, Matjaž (author)

Unanchored steel storage tanks are used in industrial plants to store oil and other petrochemical liquids. In a major earthquake, such tanks may sustain different types of damage, including elasto-plastic buckling in the shape of an elephant’s foot, which is the object of the research. The methodology introduced in this paper consists of cloud-based 1D site response analysis (SRA) and pushover-based seismic performance assessment of the tank wall using a 3D non-linear model of the tank. The SRA, which considers the recorded ground motions on the rock outcrop and the sample of interval shear-wave velocity profiles, is carried out to estimate spectral accelerations at the tank impulsive period. By adopting the code-based model of hydrodynamic pressures, the seismic demand on the tank wall is then calculated by pushover analysis. The risk-targeted decision model is used for safety verification. The proposed methodology is demonstrated through an example of a large liquid storage tank for which it is shown that the fragility function for peak ground acceleration at the rock outcrop is on the left side of the target fragility function, indicating that the tank cannot be considered safe from elephant-foot buckling. The introduced assessment process is relatively simple if the cloud-based SRA is automated. However, further experimental and numerical investigations are required to confirm the validity range of the pushover analysis for the seismic performance assessment of tanks.

• Language: English
• Keywords: elephant-foot buckling, pushover analysis, seismic fragility analysis, seismic risk, site response analysis, unanchored steel storage tanks
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FGG - Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 4126-4147
• Numbering: Vol. 52, iss. 13
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-151807
• UDC: 624.042.7
• ISSN on article: 0098-8847
• DOI: 10.1002/eqe.3903
• COBISS.SI-ID: 165428483
• Publication date in RUL: 20.10.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Earthquake engineering & structural dynamics
• Shortened title: Earthquake eng. struct. dyn.
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 0098-8847
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25358592

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: uklon slonje noge, potisna analiza, analiza potresne ranljivosti, potresno tveganje, analiza odziva tal, nepritrjeni jekleni rezervoarji

Projects

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Funding programme: H2020
• Project number: 721816
• Name: Extreme loading analysis of petrochemical plants and design of metamaterial-based shields for enhanced resilience
• Acronym: XP-RESILIENCE

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P2-0185
• Name: Potresno inženirstvo