Effect of Geometric Characteristics of Empty Metal Tanks on the Critical Dynamic Buckling Load

Abstract

We investigate a parametric study on dynamic buckling of empty steel tanks, anchored at the bottom and with open top. The study attempts to estimate the critical load (Pcr), which induces the elastic buckling at the top of the cylindrical shell under a suddenly applied concentrated load with infinite duration in the horizontal direction through transient dynamics analysis (including geometric non-linearity) using the finite element shell of the library of commercial software ANSYS while applying the criterion of Budiansky-Roth and checking by the plan-phase, and subsequently obtain the stabilization level of the critical buckling load versus the geometric characteristics of the tanks in question which led to their design. This study deals three types of tanks with heights (H) of 10m, 20m and 30m, each type has height-radius ratio (H/R) of 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, 4/3 and 5/3, giving fifteen tanks of the same thickness (t). It is reported that the effects of imperfections and damping was not considered. The investigation showed that the studied parameters have a pronounced effect on the buckling load of the tanks and the results are discussed in this study.

Keywords

• Dynamic buckling
• Critical load
• Tanks

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