Abstract
Powerful tsunami attacked to the northeast coast of Japan due to the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. There are many fishing ports along the coastal line. Several small aboveground storage tanks (ASTs) storing the fuel for fishing boats were installed at the fishing ports. Tsunami moved the ASTs and overturned them. Some of them leaked oil and sank to sea. On the other hand, although both small ASTs with full liquid and large ASTs did not move, they were subject to external pressure of the tsunami. This paper presents the bifurcation buckling analysis of shell plates in large ASTs by the axisymmetric shell finite element method. The influence of both height and density of internal liquid to the buckling characteristics under external liquid pressure due to tsunami is described.
