Effect of the model updating on the earthquake behavior of steel storage tanks

In this paper, effect of the finite element model updating on the earthquake behavior of steel storage tanks considering fluid–structure interaction is investigated. For this purpose, a cylindrical steel storage tank filled some liquid fuel oil located in Trabzon, Turkey is selected as an example. Initial finite element model of the storage tank is developed by ANSYS software and dynamic characteristics (natural frequencies, and mode shapes) are determined analytically. Ambient vibration tests are conducted on the storage tank under natural excitations to obtain dynamic characteristics (natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping ratios), experimentally. Peak Picking technique in the frequency domain is used to extract experimental dynamic characteristics. When the analytically and experimentally identified dynamic characteristics are compared to each other, some differences are found between both results. To minimize these differences, initial finite element model of the storage tank is updated according to experimental results using some uncertainties modeling parameters such as elasticity modulus. To investigate the effect of finite element model updating on the earthquake behavior of the storage tank, earthquake analyses are performed before and after model updating. In the earthquake analyses, YPT330 component of 1999 Kocaeli earthquake is selected and applied to the models in the horizontal directions. It is seen from the analyses that the displacements and the stresses after model updating are more effective than the displacements and the stresses before model updating.