Dynamic analysis of liquid storage tank including hydrodynamic interaction by boundary element method

Dynamic response of liquid storage tanks considering the hydrodynamic interactions due to earthquake ground motion has been extensively studied. Several finite element procedures, such as Balendra et. al. (1982) and Haroun (1983), have been devoted to investigate the dynamic interaction between the deformable wall of the tank and the liquid. Further, if the geometry of the storage tank can not be described by axi-symmetric case, the tank wall and the fluid domain must be discretized by three dimensional finite elements to investigate the fluid-structure-interactions. Thus, the need of large computer memory and expense of vast computer time usually make this analysis impractical. To demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of the solution technique developed herein, the dynamic behavior of ground-supported, deformed, cylindrical tank with incompressible fluid conducted by Haroun (1983) are analyzed. Good correlations of hydrodynamic pressure distribution between the computed results with the referenced solutions are noted. The fluid compressibility significantly affects the hydrodynamic pressures of the liquid-tank-interactions and the work which is done on this discussion is still little attention. Thus, the influences of the compressibility of the liquid on the reponse of the liquid storage due to ground motion are then drawn. By the way, the complex-valued frequency response functions for hydrodynamic forces of Haroun's problem are also displayed. (orig./GL)