Wall thickness variation effect on tank's shape behaviour under critical harmonic settlement

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of wall thickness variation on tank's wall buckling mode under the effect of critical harmonic settlement for open top tanks. The study was performed on four tanks which have the same geometric and material properties except wall thickness, for each case the tank was subjected to several settlement waves which has the same settlement amplitude, and the buckling mode and critical vertical settlement results were compared. For buckling mode, the results show that tanks with wall thickness at a close range have similar buckling mode behaviour and in case using too thick wall the buckling mode starts to change. And for the effect on critical vertical settlement, the results show that vertical settlement is sensitive to any variation in wall thickness beside that settlement value changes with the effected wave number and this variation could change the whole behaviour of the tanks. The study recommended that in case of performing analysis for a tank with neglecting the variation in wall thickness values, the value of chosen wall thickness should be the average of wall thickness values obtained from the designed equation.