Purpose
Liquid storage tanks play a significant role in the industries and nuclear power plants. Soil–structure interaction (SSI) may lead to the damage and instability of such structure. Hence, the earthquake response of a cylindrical soil-supported tank is investigated using a simplified method in the time domain.
Methods
The continuous liquid in the tank is lumped as convective spring–mass, impulsive spring–mass and rigid mass. The soil impedance function is modeled as the lumped-parameter system. The governing equations of motion for the coupled system under horizontal earthquake excitations are developed from the Hamilton’s principle, which are solved based on the Newmark-β method.
Results
Comparison studies are performed between the present results and the available results. Good agreements are observed. The variation of natural frequencies, liquid sloshing height, impulsive mass displacement, base shear and overturning moment of the tank are studied for different soil properties.
Conclusion
It is concluded that the SSI effect reduces the impulsive mass displacement, the base shear and base moment; however, it has no apparent effect on the convective frequency and liquid surface wave elevation.