Building a real time system for evaluating oil storage tank damage due to earthquakes in petroleum stockpiling bases

It will be difficult to prevent the damage of oil storage tanks caused by a large earthquake even if extreme care has been exercised. Therefore, rational emergency responses will be required for preventing expansion into secondary disaster. In this paper, we propose a system that can estimate ground motion distribution in a whole of petroleum stockpiling base using a seismic record and evaluate damage of oil storage tanks just after an earthquake in order to support rational emergency responses. Spectral ratios of horizontal and vertical component of microtremors were used for evaluation of relative surface soil amplification. The system can assess the hazard for circumferential shell stress, axial shell stress, seismic capacity and liquid sloshing wave height immediately using the ground motion at each tank site estimated from both the relative soil amplification factors and a seismic record at a petroleum stockpiling base just after a large earthquake.Copyright © 2004 by ASME