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Evaluation of the adequacy of a spring‐mass model in analyses of liquid sloshing in anchored storage tanks

This research addresses the influence of the load characteristics, that is, frequency content and maximum acceleration, on the wall stresses of an anchored water storage tank. A low‐density polyethylene tank with a range of six different aspect ratios (water height to tank radius) was tested using a shake table. Eight sine excitations that cover the lowest free vibration frequency of the tank‐water system were applied. Additionally, two sets of five Ricker wavelet excitations were utilized. Each set represents potential earthquakes with a bandwidth between a low and a high dominant frequency. The experimentally determined maximum stresses and those obtained from calculations using a common spring‐mass model employed for seismic analysis of tanks were compared. The results reveal that the relationship between the excitation frequency and the wall stresses strongly depends on the sloshing behavior, especially when the frequency of loading is in the vicinity of the lowest free–vibration frequency of the tank–water system. When the frequencies are dissimilar, there is a proportional relationship between stress and the maximum acceleration of the excitation. The spring‐mass model was found to underestimate both the maximum hoop stress (for aspect ratios greater than two) and axial stress (for aspect ratios equal to 0.5). This occurs because is the spring‐mass model cannot capture, in all cases, the contribution of chaotic sloshing to wall stress.