Experimental study on the seismic response of liquid storage tanks with Sliding Concave Bearings

It is known that, earthquakes have caused severe damages to a large number of industrial facilities, mainly storage tanks with extremely serious economic and environmental implications. Thus, it is extremely importance to use techniques for reducing the seismic vulnerability of such structures. Seismic base isolation as seismic protection technology is already known and its development continues to grow. The present paper focuses on the seismic performance of broad and slender atmospheric storage steel tanks base isolated by Sliding Concave Bearings (SCB). The performance study carried out through shaking table tests on a vertical cylindrical steel tank model allowed to determine quantitatively the efficiency of the SCB by analyzing two structural parameters: (a) sloshing height and (b) base shear force. Six real ground motions with different characteristics were considered. Results show the effectiveness of SCB in reducing the base shear force values for all studied cases without significantly affecting the sloshing displacements when compared with fixed-base support.