Analyzing fixed roof storage tanks using FE principles to investigate the stress relief degree caused by live loads against wind loads

Recent studies have focused on impact of environmental loads on large scale structures including storage facilities. In particular reference to severe gust wind conditions that impinge on storage tanks farms1, present paper sets the starting point for discovering feasible solutions to prevent or reduce the catastrophic failure due to occurrence of such events. Therefore, this work searches through the detectable potentialities of live and snow loads in reducing and relieving the severity of wind-induced critical stresses and other structural responses that generated at particular regions within domed roof storage tank structure. As practical model, a typical mid-sized 10000 cubic metres capacity, cylindrical walls, self-supporting dome roof fuel storage tank is studied in this article with different environmental and operational loading conditions. A numerical technique utilizing Finite Element (FE) principles has been implemented to model the structural components of the storage tank and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to model the wind field. To cover the investigation aspects comprehensively, four models were selected to idealize the aforementioned storage tank: low and high aspect ratios, each with shallow and deep dome roof degrees. Moreover, four different load cases were selected for use in the structural analysis: full and empty tank cases, each with wind load only, or with combined wind, snow and live loads.