Sloshing Control of a Liquid Storage Tank Under Long Period Ground Excitation

Abstract eng:
The isolation technology is often employed to reduce the base shear of the liquid storage tank, but consequently causing the increase of the sloshing response, which may result in the damage of tanks, especially for those tanks excited by the longperiod ground motions. In this study, a kind of rotatory damper, called viscous mass damper (VMD), is used with isolation bearings to control the sloshing response of the liquid storage tank excited by long-period ground motions. A two-lumpedmass model is used to represent the liquid storage tank, and a large number of time history analyses are conducted to investigate and compare the seismic responses of the non-isolated tank, the isolated tank without a VMD, and the one with a VMD. Three natural earthquake records are chosen for the seismic analysis, including the 1940 Imperial Valley earthquake, the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake and the 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake, and the last two are considered to be long period earthquakes. The analysis results show that the wave heights of the storage tank under the Chi-Chi and Tokachi-oki earthquake are much higher than that under the Imperial Valley earthquake, even though the PGAs of the former two earthquake records are much lower than that of the Imperial Valley record. In the long period earthquake cases, the base shear and wave height of the liquid storage tank are even found to be higher than those of the non-isolated tank. Therefore, the seismic response of liquid storage tank under the long period ground motion cannot be effectively controlled by only subjoining the isolating bearings. However, under both the Imperial Valley and the long period ground motions, the wave heights of the isolated tank with a VMD are found to be lower than those of the non-isolated tank, which implies that the sloshing response of the liquid storage tank can be reduced by using the isolation bearing and VMD. Also, the base shears of the isolated tank with a VMD are found to be much lower than those of the non-isolated tank. What’s more, compared with the isolated tank, the base displacement of the isolated liquid storage tank with a VMD is much lower. Therefore, the VMD can be used with isolation bearings to effectively control the sloshing response, as well as the base shear, of the liquid storage tank under the long period ground motion.

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