Shaking Table Substructure Tests Of Storage Tanks Considering SSI

With the rapid development of the petrochemical industry, vertical storagetanks are being more widely applied in the national production. There are mainlyfour methods for investigating the seismic performance of storage tanks. theoreticalanalysis, numerical simulation, the model experiments and post-earthquakeinvestigation. Compared with other methods, the model experiment plays animportant role. The seismic performance of the tanks are normally investigatedthrough shake table tests of the whole structure, when considering soil-structureinteraction(SSI), the traditional shaking table test method is only able to completesmall-scale model experiments, and it is so difficult to ensure similar conditions thatthe experimental results are difficult to fully reflect the prototype structuralperformance. Therefore, this paper proposes shaking table substructure test methodwhich discloses the seismic performance of tanks considering SSI with large scalemodle test. The main contents and conclusions are as follows:1In order to improve the control accuracy of shaking table, this paper studiesshaking table direct and modified iteration control method through theoreticalanalysis, numerical simulation and experimental methods. The displacement-displacement and displacement–acceleration iteration methods are investigated.The research results showes that: the modified iteration method is superior to thedirect iterative method; the displacement-acceleration method is better than thedisplacement-displacement iteration method when considering the accelerationcontrol accuracy.2The shaking table substructure test method is proposed for investigating theseismic performance of tanks considering the SSI. It is shown from theoreticalanalysis, numerical simulation and experimental results that the method behaviorexcellent performance in term of stability and accuracy.3The seismic performance of the storage tank considering SSI is investigatedthrough the shaking table substructure test method. The seismic behavior of the tankwith respect to the foundation stiffness, liquid height and seismic category areconsidered. It is shown from the results that with the reduction of the foundationstiffness, the displacement and acceleration responses of the structure are decreased;with the increase of the liquid height, the displacement response of the structure isreduced and the acceleration respons tended external to increase substantially; andthe structural responses are different under different excitation,.