Seismic evaluation of frequency influence and resonant behavior for lead rubber bearing isolated rigid rectangular liquid tanks

The seismic behavior of a partially filled rigid rectangular liquid tank is investigated under short-and longduration ground motions.A finite element model is developed to analyze the liquid domain by using four-noded quadrilateral elements.The competency of the model is verified with the available results.Parametric studies are conducted for the dynamic parameters of the base-isolated tank,using a lead rubber bearing to evaluate the optimum damping and time period of the isolator.The application of base isolation has reduced the total and impulsive hydrodynamic components of pressure by 80 to 90 percent,and base shear by 15 to 95 percent,depending upon the frequency content and duration of the considered earthquakes.The sloshing amplitude of the base-isolated tank is reduced by 18 to 94 percent for most of the short-duration earthquakes,while it is increased by 17 to 60 percent for the majority of the long-duration earthquakes.Furthermore,resonance studies are carried out through a long-duration harmonic excitation to obtain the dynamic behavior of non-isolated and isolated tanks,using a nonlinear sloshing model.The seismic responses of the base-isolated tank are obtained as higher when the excitation frequency matches the fundamental sloshing frequency rather than the isolator frequency.

A numerical study of violent sloshing problems with modified MPS method

A numerical study on violent liquid sloshing phenomenon in a partially filled rectangular container is carried out by using moving particle semi-implicit（MPS） method. The present study deals with the implementation of five modifications all together over the original MPS method. The modifications include improved source terms for pressure Poisson equation, special approximation technique for the representation of gradient differential operator, collective action of mixed free surface particle identification boundary conditions, effecting Neumann boundary condition on solving the PPE and fixing judiciously the parting distance among particles to prevent collision. The suitability of the kernel function used in the original MPS method along with these five modifications is investigated for violent sloshing problems. The present model ensures a good agreement between numerical results with the existing experimental observations. The model is successfully applied to a partially filled tank undergoing horizontal sinusoidal excitation to compute the sloshing wave amplitudes and pressure on tank walls. The assessment of dynamic behaviour manifested in terms of base shear, overturning moment and impact pressure load exerted on tank ceiling induced by violent sloshing motion using MPS method is not reported in the open literature and has been efficiently carried out in the present study.