Abstract A method for analysis of response of axisymmetric towers partly submerged in water to earthquake ground motion is presented. The tower is idealized as a finite element system. The hydrodynamic terms are determined by solving the Laplace equation, governing the dynamics of incompressible fluids, subject to appropriate boundary conditions. For cylindrical towers, these solutions are obtained as explicit mathematical solutions of the boundary value problems; whereas they are obtained by the finite element method in case of towers with non‐cylindrical outside surface. The response to earthquake ground motion is determined by step‐by‐step integration of the equations of motion. Analyses of two actual intake towers are presented to illustrate results obtained by this method. The small computation times required for these analyses demonstrate that the method is very efficient. The effectiveness of this formulation lies in avoiding the analysis of a large system by using a substructure approach and in exploiting the important feature that structural response to earthquake ground motion is essentially contained in the first few modes of vibration of the tower with no surrounding water.
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