Reliability estimation of underground horizontal fuel tank limit states

Abstract

Fuel tanks are designed with regard to standard loads and operating conditions. The investigations of the paper show the impact of such factors as tank corrosion and other means on variation of stress fields and deformation of the underground horizontal tank shell. Introduction of probabilistic methods allows for structural reliability assessment. While the computational time of the entire tank FEM model is high the preliminary analysis is restricted to structural part only. The analysis makes it possible to optimize the structure with regard to construction costs.