Hurricane failures of tanks for the oil industry

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of recent research aimed at understanding the behavior of aboveground steel tanks under wind loads, carried out by the author and by other researchers in this field. The tanks considered are representative of those constructed for the oil industry, with radius to thickness ratios of the order of 1500, and height to radius ratios less than one. The paper discusses the buckling behavior of isolated tanks, and the buckling of tanks which are part of a group in a tank farm. The behavior of tanks with a fixed roof is shown with reference to failures occurred during the recent hurricanes in the Caribbean and the US Gulf. Finally, advances in modeling techniques are discussed, including computational buckling analysis and reduced stiffness methods.