A Study on the Strength Safety of the Prestressed Concrete Outer Tank for a Membrane LNG Storage Tank

This paper presents the numerical study on the strength safety of the prestressed concrete outer tank for a LNG storage tank, which is manufactured by sets of membrane panels with special corrugations. This study for a finite element analysis assumes that the membrane panel of the inner tank was fractured and the liquefied natural gas stored in the inner membrane tank was leaked to the prestressed concrete outer tank. The stress and displacement of the outer tank have been analyzed for five different loadings, which are originated by a hydrostatic pressure and a weight of a LNG, a temperature difference, a weight of the prestressed concrete and a boil-off gas pressure. The computed FEM results indicate that the PC outer tank with a storage capacity of 200,000 has a good strength safety for a leaked LNG from the membrane inner tank, but the increased cryogenic loadings in which are originated by a leaked LNG decreases the strength safety of the PC structure. This may lead to the collapse of the outer storage tank.