Importance of the flexural and membrane stiffnesses in large deflection analysis of floating roofs

Applying integrated variational principles on fluid and deck plate to the large deflection analysis of floating roofs, this paper investigates the significance of the flexural and membrane components in the formulations of the deck plate. Integrated variational principles facilitate the treatment of the compatibility of deformation between floating roof and supporting liquid. Analysis results show that different assumptions about deck plate formulation commonly used in the literature, results in considerably different deflection and stress patterns on the floating roof. The results show that modeling of the deck plate as a flexural element rather than the membrane, by eliminating the need for nonlinear analysis, gives reasonable results for deflections and stresses in the deck plate. Finally, to check the results of the variational formulation, employing Bessel functions and ignoring membrane stiffness an approximate solution is derived and its results compared with those of the variational formulation. This comparison shows that the approximate solution closely follows the variational formulation.