Buckling of short tanks due to hurricanes

FLORES FERNANDO G.; GODOY LUIS A.

ENGINEERING STRUCTURES

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 1998 vol. 20 p. 752 - 760

0141-0296

Buckling of thin-walled short tanks, under severe wind conditions is investigated using numerical methods. The shells are representative of cylindrical tanks that failed during hurricane Marilyn in the Caribbean islands in 1995, with radius/thickness ratio of 1900 and radius/height ratio of 5. Several models are employed to study instability: bifurcation buckling from linear fundamental path, nonlinear analysis of imperfect tank, and dynamic response. Wind is modeled using several pressure distributions in the circumferential direction, and the results compared with those due to axisymmetric pressure. The results show that for the present very thin-walled short tanks, bifurcation buckling produces good estimates of the critical state; however, the structure is imperfection sensitive and this load is reduced in the order of 30-50%