Numerical analysis of influence of intermediate stiffeners setting on the stability behaviour of thin-walled steel tank shell

Cylindrical bolted steel tanks with H/D~1 can be made from very thin steel courses the thickness of which is determined by tension. The important issue is to stiffen the whole shell with intermediate stiffeners to prevent from stability loss in situations when the tank is empty and exposed to a strong wind. The FEM package Abaqus with nonlinear Riks algorithm was used for analysis. A parametric study programmed in python, internal Abaqus language was conducted to establish the influence of number and position of intermediate stiffeners on buckling resistance of the tank. After calculating nearly one thousands tasks, results were gathered with python script and compared with classic design recommendations proposed in Eurocode 3, DIN 18 800 Part 4 and AWWA D103-09. Simplified analytical approaches present in current standards are rather conservative and one may want to look for more sophisticated methods of analysis of tank shells presented in this paper for more economical design of such structures. From the comparison of the results obtained with different numerical strategies such as linear buckling analysis (LBA), geometrically nonlinear analysis of perfect (GNA) and imperfect (GNIA) structure a necessity of taking into account imperfections in GNA arises. Otherwise a capacity of the shell structure may be overestimated even over the value obtained from LBA.