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Dynamic Analysis of Elevated Water Storage

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Translational Components

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DOI: 10.1007/s13369-014-1042-6

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Dynamic Analysis of Elevated Water
Storage Tanks due to Ground Motions
Rotational and Translational Components

L.Kalani Sarokolayi, B.Navayi Neya,

H.R.Tavakoli & J.Vaseghi Amiri

Arabian Journal for Science and

Engineering

ISSN 1319-8025
Volume 39
Number 6

Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:4391-4403

DOI 10.1007/s13369-014-1042-6

1 23
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 Author's personal copy
Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403
DOI 10.1007/s13369-014-1042-6

RESEARCH ARTICLE - CIVIL ENGINEERING

Dynamic Analysis of Elevated Water Storage Tanks due to

Ground Motions Rotational and Translational Components
L. Kalani Sarokolayi B. Navayi Neya
H. R. Tavakoli J. Vaseghi Amiri

Received: 4 July 2012 / Accepted: 15 May 2013 / Published online: 4 April 2014
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals 2014

Abstract Rotational components of ground motion includ-

ing rocking and torsional components have rarely been
accounted for in designing and analyzing water storage
tanks. In this paper, the effects of these components on the
dynamic response of water storage tanks are studied. The
rotational components of ground motion acceleration have
been obtained using an improved approach from the corre-
sponding available translational components based on the
transversely isotropic elastic wave propagation and classi-
cal elasticity theories. Based on this approach, it becomes
possible to consider the frequency-dependent wave veloci-
ties and incident wave angle to generate the rotational com-
ponents. For this purpose, the translational components of
four earthquakes have been selected to generate their relative
rotational components based on SV and SH wave incidence.
The translational and computed rotational motions were then
applied to the concrete elevated water storage tank with dif-
ferent water elevations considering fluidstructure interac-
tion using the finite element method. The linear responses
of these structures considering the full six components of 1 Introduction
the ground motion show that the rotational components of
ground motion can affect the displacement and reaction force Water storage tanks are vital structures as they are expected to
of the structure, depending on the frequency of structure and be functional after an earthquake. Water tanks are classified in
predominant frequencies of translational and rotational com- the group of post-disaster structure in the National Building
ponents of ground motion. Code of Canada [1] as they play an important role in provid-
ing municipal water supply and fire fighting systems. In con-
Keywords Elevated water storage tank Six components ventional seismic analysis, tanks are usually analyzed using a
of ground motion Fluidstructure interaction simplified representation of earthquake ground motion lim-
Frequency-dependent wave velocity ited to the translational components of acceleration. Since
1963, Housner proposed an idealization for obtaining the
seismic response of rigid rectangular and cylindrical water
L. Kalani Sarokolayi B. Navayi Neya (B) H. R. Tavakoli tanks fully anchored to a rigid foundation and subjected to
J. Vaseghi Amiri
horizontal ground motion [2]. Many current standards and
Department of Civil Engineering, Babol Noshirvani
University of Technology, Babol, Iran guidelines such as [3,4] have adapted Housers method with
e-mail: navayi@nit.ac.ir some modifications subsequent to research studies conducted

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subsequently. Kana and Dodge [5] considered liquid sloshing
for the design of water storage tanks by including only the
translational components of ground motion. More recently,
Attari and Rofooei [6], Kalani Sarokolayi and Navayi Neya
[7], Moslemi et al. [8] analyzed water storage tanks subjected
to translational components of the ground motion. Their
researches focused on linear analysis of cylindrical water
storage tanks and the lateral responses of these structures.
The kinematics of any point in a medium is ideally
expressed in terms of three translational and three rotational
components. Observations of earthquake events have shown
that many structural failures and damage are associated to
rotational components of ground motions. For example, tor-
sional responses of tall buildings in Los Angeles during the
San Fernando earthquake in 1971 could be associated to tor-
sional excitation. Many researchers [912] have shown that
the importance of the rotational components in the seismic
behavior of building structures. Awad and Humar [13] have
shown even symmetric structures can be expected to undergo
substantial torsional excitation during an earthquake. Ghaya-
maghamian et al. [14] have demonstrated that in the case
of stiff building structures, the torsional components can
increase of up to four times the displacements. They also
found that the accidental eccentricity coefficient can increase
up to 0.6 at periods shorter than 0.3 s. However, in most exist-
ing codes, no provisions are made to account for the rocking
components even if it is known that they can have a signifi-
cant impact on tall and rigid structures.
Newmark [15] was perhaps the first to establish a relation-
ship between the torsional and translational components of a
ground motion based on constant velocity of wave propaga-
tion assumption. The method he developed was used by sev-
eral authors such as [16]. The assumption of constant plane
wave velocity made for calculating the rotational compo-
nents time histories from the translational components may
be difficult to justify. There are some works that are based on
a direct empirical scaling of spectral amplitudes improving
the algorithms used for generation of synthetic strong motion
accelerograms of translational components [17,18]. More
rational procedure has been developed by other researchers
[1923], where the requirement of a constant plane wave
velocity is relaxed and the dispersion and transient arrival
times of waves in an elastic half-space can be considered. In
fact, the angle of incidence depends not only on the wave
velocity but also upon the frequencies of the impinging har-
monics of the ground motion. The dependence of the angle of
incidence as well as the velocity of propagation of the wave
on the frequency of the harmonics constituting the ground
motion of the site must be considered when generating the
rotational components from the translational components.
Hong-Nan Li et al. [24] proposed an improved approach to
obtain the rotational components of a seismic ground motion
which included the effect of the relative contributions of the
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403
P, SV and SH waves to calculate time histories of rotational
components. In their studies, the propagation velocity of dif-
ferent waves is included, and can be obtained from different
relationships for the body and surface waves which depend on
the angle of incident waves corresponding to each frequency.
Lee and Liang [25] have used Lee and Trifunac method [21]
to develop the algorithms for generating rotational motion
from the corresponding available translational motions. They
used the translational accelerograms recorded at Pacoma dam
in California, during the February 9, 1971 San Fernando
earthquake to generate their corresponding artificial torsional
and rocking components. Using data collected from the
Chiba dense array, Ghayamghamian et al. [14] generated the
torsional ground motion and analyzed several building mod-
els for different structural characteristics subjected to six cor-
related components of ground motion. Nouri et al. [26] com-
pared different methods of torsional ground motion evalua-
tion. They showed that torsional components obtained from
time derivation methods with constant wave velocity used
by Ghafory-Ashtiany and Singh [16], are approximately 68
times larger than of dense array and other methods. During
the past two decades, in spite of the fact that numerous studies
have continued to show the significance of the rotational com-
ponents, the structural response under seismic events [27,28]
and improvement in the empirical scaling of rotational spec-
tra [29,30], the progress in developing and deploying strong
motion measurement instruments capable of recording the
rotational components of earthquake waves has been slow
due to its technical difficulty. During an earthquake event,
the waves arrive in a given point of the ground surface with
specific distance from the fault that can be body or surface
waves. In practical applications, in the absence of surface
waves, it is difficult to determine the ratio of P and S waves
in a seismic record. Normally, one can properly assume that
the content of S wave is primary in the chosen seismic wave
on the site not far from the earthquake source rather than
neglecting the content of P wave [24]. In the present paper,
both the SV and SH waves are considered to obtain the three
rotational components of earthquake from three translational
components. We propose an improvement of the approach
proposed by Hong-Nan et al. [24], based on SV and SH wave
incidence proposed. Using their formulation, it becomes pos-
sible to consider frequency-dependent wave velocities for the
rotational components of ground motion calculations.
In the second part of the paper, we present a series of analy-
ses of water tanks. The fluidstructure interaction is consid-
ered in dynamic analysis of fluid container structures. We fol-
low several authors to use the Lagrangian approach because
of its simplicity [3134]. In this approach, the fluid kinemat-
ics is formulated in terms of displacements similar to solids
and the fluid motion is described in terms of displacement
field. Therefore, the compatibility and equilibrium conditions
are automatically satisfied at the fluidstructure interface.
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403 4393

In this paper, the response of an elevated water storage plane waves will originate on the torsional component of the
tank due to six correlated components of ground motion is ground motion at the free surface, gz . In Fig. 1a, u and w
presented, where the rotational components are generated denote the translational components of ground motion, AS ,
using the improved approach with considering frequency- ASP , ASS and 0 , 1 , 2 are the amplitudes of incident SV
dependent waves velocity. Based on the mentioned approach wave, reflected P and SV waves in x = 0 plane and their
and assuming linear behavior of tank materials, dynamic angles with vertical direction, respectively. These character-
analysis of elevated water storage tank is done using the istics are also defined in the plane y = 0 for the incident ray
LagrangianLagrangian formulation to take into account of SH waves as shown in Fig. 1b, where the only non-zero
fluidstructure interaction in finite element method. For this components are u, v and there is only one reflected SH wave
purpose, calculation is done using ANSYS [35] software and with 2 = 0 and A2 = A0 .
the response of structure is obtained for three translational Based on the classical elasticity theory, the relation
components and also six correlated components of different between the rotational and translational motions in a given
ground motions. point can be expressed by [40]:
Based on works of Livaoglu and Dogangun [36,37] and  
1 w u
also Mahmood and Ahmed [38], the effect of soilstructure gy = (1)
interaction (SSI) under translational components of ground 2 x z
motion is negligible for bed rock while in soft soil is impor- Using the wave propagation theory and by imposing the free
tant. Because of the complexity of the rotational movement shear stress condition at the ground surface added by Eq. (1)
effect on the response of tank and also novelty of the effect and assuming that the translational components u, v and w
of the rotational components of ground motion on structure of the ground motion at the free surface are the only available
responses in the literature, in this research, the effect of SSI components, the rocking and torsional components of ground
is neglected. motion are obtained from Eqs. (2) and (3), respectively [24].
i
gy = w (2)
2 Rotational Component Cx
i
gz = v (3)
Seismic ground motions are generated by plane harmonic 2C x
waves propagating from the site close to the earthquake
These equations can be rewritten as:
source. The direction of propagation of the waves is assumed
 
to lie in the vertical (X, Z) plane. As shown in Fig. 1, the waves
in the plane perpendicular to the direction of propagation are gy () = Rw e( 2 +w )i
Cx
decomposed into in-plane components of amplitude AS due   (4)

to the SV waves and out-of-plane components of amplitude gz () = Rv e( 2 +v )i
2C x
A0 due to the SH waves. The incidence and reflection of
in-plane waves in three dimensional structures will gener- in which C x = / sin 0 , is the propagation velocity of S
ate two rotational components of the ground motion at the wave, is angular velocity of each harmonic waves, Rw , Rv ,
free surface: gx and gy and are referred to as the rock- w and v are the translational components amplitudes and
ing components, and the incidence and reflection of out-of- their corresponding phase.

Fig. 1 Propagation of a
incident SV wave, b incident SH
wave [39]

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4394 Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403

These equations show that the amplitude of rotational The damping matrix of the fluid elements defined as [43]:
components is related to translational components amplitude,
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
( Cx Rw ) or ( 2C x Rv ), and their phase difference is 2 .
Equation (4) is written in the frequency domain and to gen- 0 0 0 0 0 0

erate the time history of rotational components, this equation 0 0 0 0 0 0


must be rewritten in time domain using the inverse Fourier [CF ] = 0 0 0 0 0 0 (9)

transformation as follows: 0 0 0 0 100000 0 0


+ 0 0 0 0 0 100000 0
1
gy (t) = gy ()eit dt 0 0 0 0 0 0 100000
2
where is water viscosity.
(5)
+ The damping matrix of the structure is defined using the
1
gz (t) = gz ()eit dt linear combination of mass and stiffness proportional damp-
2
ing which is known as Rayleigh damping. This procedure is
expressed as [41]:
The improved approach developed by [24], is used to cal-
culate the angle of incident waves. Using this approach and [CS ] = 1 [M] + 1 [K ] (10)
introducing (x = sin 0 ) based on Snells law, Eqs. (6) and 1 = 21 1 (12 1 ) (11)
(7) are used to obtain the angle of incident SV and SH waves. (1 1 2 2 )
1 = 2 (12)
(12 22 )
2x 1 K 2 x 2
G= , 0 C (6) where 1 , 2 , 1 and 2 are the first two natural frequencies
K (1 2x 2 )
of tank and their damping ratios, respectively.
2x 1 K 2 x 2 The damping matrix of the coupled system can be
G= , 0  C (7)
i K (1 2x 2 ) expressed as:

where G = Rw /Ru and G = Rw /Rv are the proportion of [C] = [CS ] + [CF ] (13)
translational Fourier amplitudes for rocking components in The stiffness matrix is obtained using assembling of the fluid
x z and y z plane due to SV waves and G = Rv /Ru is and solid elements having eight nodes and three degrees of
the mentioned proportion for torsional component in x y freedoms per nodes. For the fluid elements, the shear mod-
plane due to SH waves. In addition, K = / and C = ulus is set to zero and the fluid bulk modulus, K B , is used
arcsin(/) is the incident critical angle. to establish the elastic stressstrain relations using the stiff-
ness matrix [43]. For applying the boundary conditions at
the fluidstructure interface, the displacement in the normal
3 Finite Element Modeling of Water Tanks direction is imposed to be the same in the fluid and the solid,
whereas there is not any constraint in tangential direction.
Within the displacement-based finite element methodol- The force vector of F(t) in Eq. (8) is defined to include
ogy (LagrangianLagrangian approach), the displacement the six ground motion components as follows:
is taken as principal unknown variable for both the solid
and fluid domains in finite element mesh. The Lagrangian u g (t) + u ge (t)

F(t) = M v g (t) + v ge (t) (14)
Lagrangian formulation is a simple method to model fluid


structure interaction, it leads to the following governing w g (t) + w ge (t)
dynamic equation [41]. The dynamic equation system can be where u g (t), v g (t), w g (t), u ge (t), v ge (t) and w ge (t) are the
solved using Newmark method for time discretisation algo- translational components of ground acceleration in x, y and z
rithm [41]. direction and the equivalent translational acceleration result-
ing from the rotational components of ground acceleration
[M] u + [C] u + [K ] u = F(t) (8) about mentioned axis, respectively. The accelerations u ge (t),
v ge (t) and w ge (t) can be expressed as follows [44,45]:
in which M, C and K , are the mass, damping and stiffness
2 x) ( y + 2 x)
u,
u and F(t) are vectors denoting the accel- ( z gy
u ge (t)

matrices and u,
gy gz gz
erations, velocities, displacements and external loads of the v ge (t) = ( gx z gx y) ( gz x + gz y)
2 2
(15)
coupled system, respectively. In this research, the lumped



w ge (t) ( gx y + gx z) ( gy x + gy z)
2 2
mass formulation is selected [42].

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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403 4395

where gx , gy , gz , gx , gx , gx are the angular acceler-
ations and velocities about x, y and z axes which are the
derivation of Eq. (5) with respect to time and x, y and z are
the coordinates of each nodes.
4 Numerical Results
The elevated water storage tank considered in this research is
of a cylindrical shape, a central shaft and eight stiffeners are
used in the cylinders base to avoid in-plane flexural stresses.
The geometrical characteristics including tu , Ru , Hu , tb , Rb ,
Hb , te and ti which are shown in Fig. 2a, are considered 0.4,
5.6, 5, 0.5, 1 and 10 m, respectively. All calculations are done
for stiffeners thickness ti = 1.5 m and te = 0.2 m and for
water levels Hr = 0.4Hu and Hr = 0.8Hu .
Fig. 2 a Geometrical characteristics, b finite element model of ele-
vated water storage tank
The materials properties of tank at ambient temperature
are assumed E c = 33 GPa, E s = 200 GPa, c = 0.3, c =
2,400 kg/m3 , w = 1,000 kg/m3 , K = 2 GPa for Young
modulus of concrete and steel, Poisons ratio, concrete and
water density and Bulk modulus, respectively. In addition, in
all the analyses, of the damping 1 , 2 and are considered
constant and equal to 0.05, 0.05, 0.001, respectively [40].
The reinforcement bars of concrete can be modeled using
either of the two approaches, (i) the reinforcement bars are
simulated by link element or (ii) the reinforcement is included
as a percentage of reinforcing section or volume ratio. These
two methods are compared for modeling of concrete elevated
tanks and the simulations show that they lead to the same
results Therefore, the second approach is used in this research
due to its simplicity and relative accuracy.
The volume ratio of the rebar in x, y and z directions
is defined equal to 2 %, which lies between the minimum
and maximum steel volume ratio recommended by concrete
codes for the design of tanks [2,3].
The water tank is subjected to the six components of
ground motion, the equivalent translational acceleration due
to six correlated accelerations is calculated using Eq. (15).
For this purpose, the translational components of four earth-
quake excitations have been used to derive the time histories
of the corresponding rotational components. The character-
istics of these earthquakes records are presented in Table 1,
they were selected to be different in their PGA, shear wave
velocities and epicentral distances.
The fast Fourier transform is applied to the translation
motion time histories with 4,096 discrete frequencies to
obtain their relative rotational components, and Eqs. (6) and
(7) are used to calculate the frequency-dependent angle of
incidence for each harmonic component. Knowing the angle
of incidence, the rotational components at each discrete fre-
quency are obtained using Eqs. (4) and (5) for the rocking and
torsional components. This process is used to calculate the

Table 1 Earthquake
characteristics Earthquake Station Epicentral Record PGA (g) Shear wave
distance (km) component velocity (m/s)

San Fernando 1971/02/09 11.86 Up-Down 0.709 2016.1

Pacoma Dam North-South 1.075
East-West 1.172
Tabas, Iran 1978/09/16 74.66 Up-Down 0.069 338.6
Boshroyeh North-South 0.109
East-West 0.088
Chi Chi Taiwan 1999/09/20 37.83 Up-Down 0.074 553.4
CWB9999917ALS North-South 0.175
East-West 0.163
Northridge 1994/01/17 11.79 Up-Down 0.424 629.0
000LADam North-South 0.511
East-West 0.346

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4396
Fig. 3 Time history of rocking and torsional components of four earthquakes
Fourier spectra of the rotational components at all discrete
frequencies. Then, the rotational time histories are obtained
from inverse Fourier transform of these spectra. A time step
of 0.005 s is used for generating the rotational components
time history.
The time history of the two rocking and the torsional com-
ponents for the four selected ground motions are presented
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403
in Fig. 3. It was found that the two rocking components of
the four earthquakes are very close to each other, therefore
only one component is shown in Fig. 3.
The peak rotation rate of the selected four earthquakes,
PRR, their predominant frequencies and Fourier power spec-
trum are presented in Table 2. As shown in this Table, the
Tabas earthquake has a high rotation rate and Fourier power
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403 4397

Table 2 Rotational
Earthquake PRR (mrad/s2 ) Predominant frequency (Hz) Fourier power spectrum
characteristics of earthquakes
Rocking Torsional Rocking Torsional Rocking Torsional
Com. Com. Com. Com. Com. Com.

San Fernando 57.0 32.0 11.20 13.00 9.85 5.25

Tabas 108.5 58.0 0.88 2.25 109.00 103.00
Chi Chi Taiwan 11.5 9.5 0.75 5.30 6.65 4.40
Northridge 447.4 40.0 1.10 0.40 90.00 6.90

Fig. 4 Rocking component of San Fernando earthquake by [25] and present work

spectrum of rocking and torsional components. The North-

ridge earthquake has also a high rotation rate and power
spectrum for rocking component. The rotation rate, power
spectrum can be highly affecting the structure response due
to the resonance phenomena.

5 Model Verification

To validate the proposed improved approach, the rotational

components of San Fernando earthquake are compared with
results of [25] and shown in Fig. 4. The peak values of rock-
ing and torsional accelerations for shear wave velocity of Fig. 5 The vertical displacement of fluid due to its weight
300 m/s calculated by [25] are found to be 0.3725, 0.2480
(rad/s/s), whereas our results give 0.3833, 0.2545 (rad/s/s),
respectively, where the discrepancy is found to be less than Hr   Hr
1 y2
3 %. Uz = w ydy = (16)
K K 2 y
For verification of FE model, the analytical results are y
compared with FE results. The vertical displacements of fluid Phs = w y (17)
under its weight, Uz [7], water hydrostatic pressure distribu-   2   
y 1 y Ru
tion in tank, Phs [7] and hydrodynamic pressure considering Phd = w u g Hr 3 tanh 3
impulsive mass for rigid cylindrical ground tank, Phd [2] can Hr 2 Hr Hr
be obtained using Eqs. (16), (17) and (18), respectively. (18)

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4398
Fig. 6 The hydrostatic pressure
Fig. 7 The hydrodynamic pressure
where K is Bulk modulus of water, y is the depth of water
and u g is the horizontal ground acceleration.
The results of FE model and mentioned relations are com-
pared with each other in Figs. 5, 6, 7. As shown in Figs. 5 and
6, there are very good agreement between FE and analytical
results. In Fig. 7, the hydrodynamic pressure in FE model
is less than simplified relations of Housner [2] that can be
related to the effect of surface waves where considered in FE
model of rigid tank.
6 Dynamic Response of Elevated Water Tanks
A modal analysis of the elevated water tank is performed to
calculate the frequency of tank to be used for the evaluation
of the damping proportionality coefficients 1 and 1 in Eqs.
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403
Table 3 Tank frequency
Tank Empty tank 40 % full tank 80 % full tank
Frequency (Hz) Mode 1 Mode 2 Mode1 Mode 2 Mode 1 Mode 2
2.524 3.3612 2 2.795 1.672 1.931
(11) and (12). The results are summarized in Table 3 for three
configurations; empty tank, 40 and 80 % full tanks.
To illustrate the effect of rotational ground motion com-
ponents, the dynamic analyses of the tank are carried out
considering both three translational and also full six compo-
nents of ground motion, separately. Time history of horizon-
tal displacement in maximum level of tank and time history
of reaction force for empty, 0.4 full and 0.8 full tanks sub-
jected to Tabas earthquake, which has the maximum effects,
are shown in Figs. 8, 9 and 10, respectively. Other results
are summarized in Tables 4 and 5. The ratios ( R x ), (U ) and
( R y ) shown in the mentioned Figures and Tables denote the
normalized structure responses taking the analysis without
the rotational components as reference. The ratio ( R x ) is
the maximum base shear force for the model subjected to
six components of ground motion divided by the base shear
force obtained considering only three translational compo-
nents. (U ) and ( R y ) are the ratios of the maximum horizon-
tal displacement and vertical reaction force, respectively. A
normalized response larger than unity is an indication that
the rotational components of the ground motion increase the
tanks response.
As shown in Table 4, it is remarkable that for empty tank
the maximum vertical reaction force was not affected by the
rotational components of ground motion, but the horizontal
reaction and displacement changes. The rotational compo-
nents of Tabas earthquake have the most significant effects
on the empty tanks response in comparison with the three
other earthquakes. Based on these findings, it can be con-
cluded that that in the case of linear case, the effect of the
rotational components elevated water tanks can be significant
as the base shear can increase up to 50 %.
Table 5 shows that for non-empty tanks with different
water elevations, the horizontal displacement and reaction
force and base shear of elevated water tanks due to six corre-
lated components of ground motion decrease when the water
elevation increases, but the vertical reaction force is remained
unchanged. In addition, when the water elevation is increased
up to 0.4Hu , the structural response when all the six com-
ponents of ground motion are included is close to the three
translational components results. Whereas, when the water
elevation is between 0.4Hu and 0.8Hu , the response of struc-
tural response when the six components of ground motion are
considered will be less than the results obtained by only the
three translational components. This result can be due to res-
onant effect. When the water level is changed, the natural
 Author's personal copy
Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403
Fig. 8 Response of empty tank subjected to Tabas earthquake
Fig. 9 Response of 0.4 full tank subjected to Tabas earthquake
frequency of tank can be changed and close to the predom-
inant frequency of rotational component. In this case, the
rotational component has the most effect.
Figure 11 shows the maximum horizontal displacement
along the tanks height for empty and 80 % full scenarios
It is found that the rotational components of ground motion
increase the maximum displacement with the height for the
4399
empty tank subjected to Tabas earthquake, but for when the
tank is 80 % full, this effect is reversed. Also, the displace-
ments of tanks subjected to three and six components of
ground motion are near to each other on the top of the shaft
for both empty and 0.8 full tanks and it is concluded that
stiffeners can locally eliminate the effects of rotational com-
ponents.
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4400 Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403

Fig. 10 Response of 80 % full tank subjected to Tabas earthquake

Table 4 Response of empty

tank subjected to three and six Earthquake No. of Max. base Max. horizontal Max. vertical Normalized response
correlated components of earthquake shear displacement reaction
ground motions component Rx (kN) Ux (mm) R y (kN) ( R x ) (U ) ( R y )

San Fernando 3C 23573.5 0.2470 98099.8 1.014 1.013 0.999

6C 23921.8 0.2500 98099.6
Tabas, Iran 3C 526.4 0.0075 5423.5 1.563 1.255 1.000
6C 822.8 0.0094 5423.5
Chi Chi Taiwan 3C 1789.3 0.0192 5500.6 0.993 1.007 1.000
6C 1776.0 0.0193 5500.6
Northridge 3C 3386.7 0.0391 9310.7 1.014 1.119 1.000
6C 3791.9 0.0397 9310.4

Table 5 Response of elevated

Water No. of Max. base Max. horizontal Max. vertical Normalized response
water tank with different water
elevation earthquake shear displacement reaction
elevation subjected to Tabas
component Rx (kN) Ux (mm) R y (kN) ( R x ) (U ) ( R y )
earthquake
Empty 3C 526.40 0.0075 5423.5 1.563 1.255 1.000
6C 822.81 0.0094 5423.5
40 % full 3C 486.34 0.0051 7287.5 1.047 1.245 1.000
6C 509.28 0.0063 7287.5
80 % full 3C 602.74 0.0061 9171.1 0.726 0.860 1.000
6C 437.38 0.0053 9171.1

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Fig. 11 The maximum displacement in X direction for empty and 0.8 full tank subjected to Tabas earthquake

Fig. 12 The response of 0.4 full tank subjected to three components of Tabas earthquake considering fluidstructure interaction

Fig. 13 The response of 0.4 full tank subjected to six components of Tabas earthquake considering fluid-structure interaction

To study the fluidstructure interaction on the dynamic
response of tank, the 40 % full tank is analyzed under the
three and six components of Tabas earthquake considering
rigid and flexible tank, and their horizontal reaction forces
(base shear) are shown in Figs. 12 and 13.
As shown in Figs. 12 and 13, flexibility and consequently
fluidstructure interaction play an important role on the
response of tank. For this case, the maximum horizontal reac-
tion force subjected to three and six components of earth-
quake increases to 29.5 and 20.5 %, respectively and its nor-
malized response decreases to 6.97 %.
To study the convective and impulsive masses of water on
the response of tank, these two masses are calculated for 40 %
full tank using Housner simplified relations [2] and applied
on the FE model of empty tank and the horizontal reaction
forces of tank subjected to three and six components of Tabas
earthquake are shown in Figs. 14 and 15, respectively.
The results show the horizontal reaction force of tank sub-
jected to three components of Tabas earthquake is increased
to 7.5 % considering impulsive mass alone in comparison
with empty tank. When the convective mass is also consid-
ered, the response is increased to 7.6 % while for tank under

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Fig. 14 Response of 0.4 full tank considering impulsive and convective masses subjected to 3C of Tabas earthquake
Fig. 15 Response of 0.4 full tank considering impulsive and convective masses subjected to 6C of Tabas earthquake
the six components of earthquake, horizontal reaction force is
decreased to 22 % for both impulsive and convective masses.
7 Discussion and Conclusions
The present study investigated, the effect of the rotational
ground motion correlated components on the linear dynamic
response of a water storage tanks. The finite element method
with Lagrangian Lagrangian approach to model the fluid
structure interaction is used. The rotational components of
the ground motion are deduced from the translational com-
ponents by solving the wave propagation equations in 3D.
The parametric study included the analyses of a water tank
subjected to four earthquake records and considered empty,
40 and 80 % full tanks. From the obtained results, the fol-
lowing conclusions are made.
1. The response of elevated water tanks to six correlated
components of ground motion is dependent on frequency
content of earthquake, their power spectrum and natural
frequency of structure. The response of the structure can
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Arab J Sci Eng (2014) 39:43914403
increase or decrease depending on the frequency content
of the rotational components.
2. The rotational components of a ground motion have more
effect on the horizontal displacement and shear force, but
do not affect the vertical reaction force.
3. The rotational components of a ground motion increase
the base shears and horizontal displacement of tank espe-
cially for low water elevation in the tank due to resonant
4. The stiffeners can locally eliminate the effect of rotational
components of ground motion.
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