Study on Dynamic Buckling Behavior of a Cylindrical Liquid Storage Tanks under Seismic Excitation (1st Report, Effects of Liquid Pressure on Elephant Foot Bulge)

When a thin walled cylindrical liquid storage tank is exposed to a very large seismic base excitation, buckling phenomena may be caused such as bending buckling where diamond buckling pattern or elephant foot bulge pattern will be found at the bottom portion, and shear buckling at the middle portion of the tank. In this study, dynamic buckling tests were performed using scale models of thin cylindrical liquid storage tanks for the nuclear power plants. The input seismic acceleration was increased until the elephant foot bulge occurred and the vibrational behavior before and after buckling was investigated. And the effects of static and dynamic liquid pressure on the bending buckling patterns and the buckling critical force was investigated by fundamental tests using small tank models.