Structural performance of water tank under static and dynamic pressure loading

• Water tank under static and dynamic pressure load was experimentally studied.
• FE method was adopted to simulate the experiments.
• Water effect on the response of water tank was studied.

The structural performance of water tank under static and dynamic pressure loading was experimentally investigated in this paper. The loading was applied using hydraulic actuator/dropped projectile on an inflated high pressure airbag to assert static/dynamic pressure on the specimens. The failure modes and maximum resistance of the specimens were obtained from the test and compared to the numerical results. It was found from the static pressure test that the water tank filled with water exhibited up to 31% increase in flexural resistance under static loading as compared to the empty water tank with the same material and geometry. The improvement was attributed to the effects of water in maintaining the section modulus and delaying the local buckling of the tank. Water was also found to be useful in reducing the deformation of the tank under dynamic pressure loading. Nonlinear finite element analysis was conducted to investigate the behavior of water tank subject to static and dynamic pressure loading and the accuracy of the numerical models was verified by comparing the predicted displacement responses with those observed from the tests.