Techno Press
You logged in as. Techno Press

Wind and Structures
  Volume 31, Number 6, December 2020 , pages 495-508
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/was.2020.31.6.495
 


Wind loads and wind-resistant behaviour of large cylindrical tanks in squarearrangement group. Part 2: CFD simulation and finite element analysis
Qing Liu, Yang Zhao, Shuqi Cai and Shilin Dong

 
Abstract
    To investigate the structural behaviour of grouped tanks under wind loads, 2 problems need to be figured out, wind pressures on tank shells and critical loads of the shell under these pressure distribution patterns. Following the wind tunnel tests described in the companion paper, this paper firstly seeks to obtain wind loads on the external wall in a squarely-arranged cylindrical tank group by numerical simulation, considering various layouts. The outcomes demonstrate that the numerical method can provide similar results on wind pressures and better insights on grouping effects through extracted streamlines. Then, geometrically nonlinear analyses are performed using several selected potentially unfavourable wind pressure distributions. It is found that the critical load is controlled by limit point buckling when the tank is empty while excessive deformations when the tank is full. In particular, significant reductions of wind resistance are found on grouped full tanks compared to the isolated tank, considering both serviceability and ultimate limit state, which should receive special attention if the tank is expected to resist severe wind loads with the increase of liquid level.
 
Key Words
    cylindrical tanks with floating roof; wind loads; grouping effect; square arrangement; computational fluid dynamics; stability behaviour; nonlinear finite element analysis
 
Address
Qing Liu, Yang Zhao, Shuqi Cai and Shilin Dong:Space Structures Research Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
 

Techno-Press: Publishers of international journals and conference proceedings.       Copyright © 2025 Techno Press
P.O. Box 33, Yuseong, Daejeon 305-600 Korea, Tel: +82-42-828-7996, Fax : +82-42-828-7997, Email: admin@techno-press.com