A loading test of the ground settlement (GS) performance of the oil
tank must be examined before beginning its commercial service. This
test requires the sensors to be installed around the oil tank, and the
GS is measured while water is being filled in, where the liquid level
is read with an ultrasonic radar equipment, etc., to indicate the
applied water loads. During the service of the oil tank, loading and
unloading corresponding to the oil inlet and outlet are the critical
factors to cause the oil tank destruction in a fatigue way. Thus, a
regular in-service loading test is the means of evaluating the tank
base health condition. However, the sensors for GS measurement of the
oil tank are mostly based on a liquid hydraulic sensor, which is an
intrinsically static sensor determined by the fluidity of the
measurement liquid. In order to meet the instantaneous requirement of
the loading test, first, the configuration of the optical GS sensor
was designed to suit the simultaneous measurement. Secondly, a data
acquisition system was designed by combining the digital signal
processing with a field programmable gate array to carry out a
parallel multiple channel data collection. This ensures that the GS
sensors are interrogated simultaneously to snapshot a GS status of the
oil tank, even if its load was changed slowly. A practical oil inlet
process was recorded with an ultrasonic radar oil level measurement,
and the results of oil tank GS were verified with a manual measurement
by using the Electronic Total Station. The effectiveness of our sensor
monitoring of the oil tank GS performance during the loading test has
been proven.
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