Floating roofs are widely used to prevent evaporation of contents of large cylindrical oil storage tanks. The 2003 Tokachi-Oki earthquake caused severe damage to floating roofs due to liquid sloshing. Seven single-deck floating roofs deformed to leak oil on them, and they lost buoyancy to sink. Two of them were the single-deck type with center pontoon in large diameter tanks. The present paper deals with an axisymmetric finite element analysis for the sloshing response of a floating roof with center pontoon. The hydrodynamic coupling of the fluid and the floating roof under seismic excitation is taken into consideration in the analysis. The fluid is assumed to be incompressible and inviscid, and the roof is assumed to be linear elastic. In addition, the sidewall and the bottom are assumed to be rigid. In the finite element analysis, the behavior of the fluid is formulated in terms of dynamic pressure using the Eulerian approach. The basic vibration characteristics of the single-deck floating roof with center pontoon, such as the natural periods and vibration modes, can be obtained from this analysis. These characteristics are shown comparing with those of the single-deck floating roof without center pontoon. The seismic response analysis for the input of an earthquake wave is also performed.
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