Study on vessels' seismic buckling

Inspection on Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station after the Niigateken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake in 2007 observed obvious buckling in some fluid storage vessels, the filtrate tanks and de-ionized Water tanks. All vessels with buckling belong to Seismic class C. Contrary the other vessels such as Diesel tanks showed no damage. Those phenomena presumably are brought about by differences in the vessels' condition (Vessels geometries, Fluid weight, etc.) and the seismic load on each vessel. In this study, the elephant's foot buckling occurred on the filtrate tank was simulated by FEM analysis of the large displacement elastic-plastic model with the recorded time history of seismic acceleration. The same analysis on the diesel was conducted tank to see that no damage took place also in the analysis. (author)