Thermal buckling behaviour of unstiffened and stiffened fixed-roof tanks under non-uniform heating

The problem addressed in this paper is the thermal buckling behaviour of thin-walled steel cylindrical fixed-roof tanks under non-uniform loading, induced by an adjacent tank. This specific type of thermal loading can be triggered by a neighboring tank fire where heat is transferred mainly through radiation. Since the calculation of the temperature field of the heated tank lies in other scientific fields (e.g. Computational Fluid Dynamics), a thermal pattern, proposed in literature, is used for the simulation of the fire-induced load and the investigation of the structural response of the tank due to heating. The study is conducted numerically through the Finite Element method, using coupled thermo-mechanical analysis. The general purpose Finite Element code MSC Marc, is used for the simulation. Three-dimensional models are developed using shell elements. Firstly, a detailed study of the failure mechanisms that take place in case of non-uniform loading is carried out. Furthermore, tanks with different geometries are studied. The main objective is the calculation of the critical temperature i.e. the temperature where the failure appears and the determination of the failure modes. Finally, a parametric study is conducted for the evaluation of the effectiveness of stiffening methods that are commonly used at ambient temperature design (stiffeners and stepwise wall thickness), in the case of the non-uniform heating load. In this study, the heated tanks are considered to be empty, which is the most severe scenario, for their structural integrity.