Numerical Analyses of a Model Water Tank under Strong Earthquake Loadings and Their Experimental Verification

It is quite important for designing earthquake resistant tanks to estimate water pressures acting on the tank walls during a strong earthquake. Sloshing reponses induced by strong earthquakes in a rectangular model tank were studied numerically. The nonlinear fluid dynamic (Navier-Stokes) equations were solved to treat the large sloshing problems for which the conventional theory cannot be applied. For the confirmation of the analyses, a series of shaking table tests were conducted. Impact pressures on the roof and roof vibration were measured using several earthquake loading recorded at the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake. The agreements between the experiments and the numerical results were fairly good and the numerical methods were proved to be a useful tool for designing earthquake resistant water storage tanks.