Study on Sloshing Effect of Vertical Storage Tank With Displacement Seismic Excitation

Abstract A 1:4 scale seismic simulation shaking table experiment was designed and performed to study the sloshing wave height response of a storage tank under displacement due to seismic excitation, wherein a 1000 m3 vertical storage tank was used to compare the sloshing wave height for different tanks with different foundations. Under different foundation forms, the tank motion includes sway and roll. Meanwhile, the design code and finite element method were used to compare with the experiment for mutual verification. The results show that the peak value of the sloshing wave height is at its minimum at the center, and the maximum is near the tank wall when the model tank was excited to the ground motion with the predominant frequency range from 0.29 and 0.32 Hz, and the floating roof can significantly reduce the sloshing wave height. For different input conditions with equivalent seismic magnitude, the wave heights were notably different, so the design should use multiple seismic waves as inputs. The acceleration values were different when different foundations were used, but there was little effect on the sloshing wave height. Besides, the sloshing wave heights measured in the experiment were close to those calculated using standard equations and finite element results, which proves that the three can verify each other.