Effects of Soil on the Dynamic Response of Liquid-Tank Systems

Abstract

A procedure is presented for the subsystem approach of a liquid-tank-soil system subjected to horizontal and vertical earthquake excitations by the Rayleigh-Ritz method. The dynamic interaction forces between the tank and soil are represented by the impedance functions obtained from the boundary element method. The tank is modeled as an elastic shell and the base of the tank is considered as a surface rigid disk resting on an elastic half-space or a layered elastic medium. A shaking table test of a liquid-elastic tank on an elastic soil model was carried out to verify experimentally the dynamic interaction. The numerical results show that the elastic response of the tank decreases due to the effect of radiation damping in the foundation. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the response of the tank decreases due to stiffness of the soil.