Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea ISSN:1229-3059(Print) 2287-2302(Online) 한국전산구조공학회 논문집

We investigate the effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI) on the response of LNG storage tanks to vertical seismic excitation depending on the type of foundation. An LNG storage tank with a diameter of 71 m on a clay layer with a thickness of 30 m upon bedrock, was selected as an example. The nonlinear behavior of the soil was considered in an equivalent linear method. Four types of foundation were considered, including shallow, piled raft, and pile foundations (surface and floating types). In addition, the effect of soil compaction within the group pile on the seismic response of the tank was investigated. KIESSI-3D, an analysis package in the frequency domain, was used to study the SSI and the stress in the outer tank was calculated. Based on an analysis of the numerical results, we arrived at three main conclusions: (1) for a shallow foundation, the vertical stress in the outer tank is less than the fixed base response due to the SSI effect; (2) for foundations supported by piles, the vertical stress can be greater than the fixed base stress due to the increase in the vertical impedance due to the piles and the decrease in radiation damping; and (3) soil compaction had a miniscule impact on the seismic response of the outer tank.