Experiment Study on Column Supported Resilient Tank with Passive Control Devices Considering Uplift Effect

Abstract

Compared to ground supported tank, column supported tank has the advantages of saving land space, having strong adaptability and making gas transmission cost small. It can be mass-produced in the center of a city, which has been widely used in practices. However, its seismic responses are much different from those of cylindrical tank. Limited research works and standard codes involve uplift effect and retrofitting measure of column supported tanks. Therefore, a shaking table test is conducted with a model tank designed by quasi-dimensional analysis method. To solve the problem of the anchored tank that may suffer damage under severe earthquake, a designed resilient tank is presented with mild steel dampers. The seismic responses of those two tanks are compared with each other, including the structural displacement parallel to excitation direction, the strain of tank walls and columns, the uplift displacement and the structural force. The results show that due to the uplift effect and the energy dissipation of dampers, the resilient tank has larger horizontal displacement, but less base shear and overturning moment than the anchored tank. Its strains of columns and walls in excitation direction decrease obviously, while those in perpendicular direction increase but with small variation, resulting in more balanced force allocation of the resilient tank. When encountering plastic failure, the dampers can be replaced in a very short time, making the normal use of the tank quickly even extreme condition. The resilient tank can save repairing time and cost. It can help resume the gas supply function of a city quickly after severe earthquake.