Experimental and Finite Element Analysis Investigation of Storage Tank Under Hydrostatic Pressure

Abstract

Storage tanks are widely used across various industries, such as the food and beverage, plastic and oil and fuel industries. It is important to ensure the structural integrity and safety of these tanks during their operations. To analyze a structure, finite element analysis (FEA) is a popular numerical method in stress analysis as it is cost and time effective. However, the accuracy of FEA is still under investigation due to issues such as the complexity of the structure, local stress concentrators and stress singularities. To understand these phenomena, an investigation on the accuracy of stress on the outer walls of the storage tank using FEA will be compared with experimental data. In the experiment, the stresses at elevations of 990 mm, 740 mm, 490 mm and 240 mm are measured using resistance strain gauges for every increment of water in the storage tank. From this comparison, the accuracy of stress using the finite element model manages to produce up to 94%.