SEISMIC ANALYSIS FOR COMPOSITE CONICAL TANKS

摘要

Composite steel/concrete conical vessels can be used for liquid storage in elevated tanks. These vessels consist of a steel wall and a reinforced concrete wall connected through studs. Analysis of composite tanks under seismic loading is not well studied in the literature. A coupled finite/boundary element model is developed in this study to perform time history analysis for composite tanks. The study focuses on a composite conical elevated tank recently constructed at a high seismic area in Mexico. The analysis considers the effect of both the horizontal and vertical components earthquakes. Time histories for the displacements along the vessel's height and the forces at the vessel's base for the studied tank are presented. The resulted straining actions at the base are compared with their counterparts from the response spectrum analysis. The comparison revealed that the response spectrum analysis provides a conservative solution with safety factors of 1.1, 1.4 and 1.2 for the base shear force, moment and normal force respectively.