A simplified method for calculating the stress of a large storage tank wall

Abstract

With consideration of the influences from the constraint reaction of tank bottom plate to each shell course, a simplified long-short shell method was proposed to calculate the stress of a large storage tank wall. The first shell course was regarded as a short cylindrical shell while all the others as long cylindrical shells, and the analytic solution equations of shell stress were achieved by theory of plates and shells. With resistance stress-strain method, a field stress test was done on a 15x10⁴ m³ floating-roof oil tank during its water filling test, and the measured stress data are in good agreement with the calculation results obtained by this simplified calculation method for shell stress. Therefore, the simplified method can be adopted to calculate the shell stress of large storage tanks accurately.