Behaviour of Thin-Walled Cylindrical Shell Storage Tank under Blast Impacts: Finite Element Analysis

In recent year, large-scaled thin-walled cylindrical shell storage tanks were put into local and global applications in various industries, including oil refineries and petrochemical plant. However, these storage tanks are vulnerable to fire and explosions, as what had been observed in Buncefield oil storage depot and Caribbean Petroleum refining and oil depots accidents, which caused casualties and economic loss. Therefore, parametric study using numerical simulation will be carried out to perform parametric design of thin-walled cylindrical shell storage tank in complement of analytical approach using simplified equations as validation. Blast simulation using LS-DYNA will be performed to investigate the tank’s structural responses under blast loadings. The effects of blast intensity, standoff distance and fill level on structural behaviour of the storage tank were investigated and discussed.