Settlement beneath cylindrical shells

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It should be noted that the above recommendations were all made by geotechnical engineers, and seem rather unsatisfactory when viewed from a structural engineering perspective. The distortion which occurs at the tank eaves is strongly dependent on such simple parameters as the tank aspect ratio, the radius to wall thickness ratio, the settlement distribution, and the stiffness of the rings attached to the shell wall. The criteria used to determine a maximum acceptable differential warping settlement should therefore include these parameters. Greiner (1980) appears to have been the rst to propose a rational method, applicable to all tanks, for assessing the form of wall settlements for the purposes of predicting the structural consequences. The same treatment was also used by Rotter (1987), Kamyab and Palmer (1989), Jonaidi and Ansourian (1996) and Hornung and Saal (1996) to describe settlement components. This procedure for determining the wall settlement prole yields the same result when different numbers of settlement measurement stations are adopted, provided the information is sufciently complete to give an adequate description. For a circular shell tank, the wall settlements u are described in terms of a truncated Fourier series around the circumference:
n

u = u0 +
i =1

(ui cos i + u i sin i)

(2)

The initial term u0 denes the uniform settlement of the tank. The rst harmonic terms u1 and u 1 dene the tilt of the tank axis, and the orientation of the line of steepest slope. The second harmonic terms u2 and u 2 relate to the ovalling of the tank, together with the principal axes about which the ovalling occurs. Higher harmonic terms provide greater detail concerning local abrupt variations in support settlement. It should be noted that the rst term u0 is normally the largest because the ground is likely to be relatively uniform, even if soft. The rst harmonic component is likely to be the next largest, because the stiffness of the tank does not resist settlements in this form. The successive harmonic terms thereafter are then likely to decline progressively, because the shell is progressively stiffer in resisting each component. Soilstructure interaction can play a signicant role in the local differential settlement beneath a tank. It should be noted that very rapid local changes in settlement are unlikely to occur because the base of the tank wall will not follow a sharply changing ground prole but will separate from the surface (e.g. it will not displace to the shape of a small hole dug beneath the wall). This problem was explored for unanchored tanks by Hornung and Saal (1996, 1997). The number of terms that can be included in the series of Eq. (2) is limited by the number of settlement observations available. Five observations are needed to make a rst estimate of ovalling, but the tank is not very stiff in ovalling, so the wall stresses induced in the this mode are generally quite small. The stresses arising from higher components induce much higher stresses because the tank is stiff, but the tank stiffness and the relative homogeneity both also tend to make