Design of a Metamaterial-Based Foundation for Fuel Storage Tanks and Experimental Evaluation of Its Effect on a Connected Pipeline System

Abstract

The recent advance of seismic metamaterials has led to various concepts for the attenuation of seismic waves, one of them being the locally resonant metamaterial. Based on this concept, the so-called metafoundation has been designed. It can effectively protect a fuel storage tank from ground motions at various fluid levels. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed design, the response of the metafoundation is compared to the response of a tank on a traditional concrete foundation. The design process of conceiving the metafoundation, optimizing it for a specific tank, and its seismic response are described herein. Furthermore, the response of a tank during a seismic event can cause severe damages to pipelines connected to the tank. This phenomenon can be of critical importance for the design of a seismic tank protection system and must be treated with care. Since the coupled structure (tank + foundation + pipeline) exerts highly nonlinear behavior, due to the complexity of the piping system, a laboratory experiment has been conducted. More precisely, a hybrid simulation (HS) that uses the metafoundation and a tank as a numerical substructure (NS) and a piping system as a physical substructure (PS) was employed. To make the results relatable to the current state of the art, additional experiments were performed with concave sliding bearings (CSBs) as an isolation system in the NS. The metafoundation offered a clear attenuation of tank stresses and, in some cases, also reduced the stresses in the piping system.

Computational Verification and Experimental Validation of the Vibration-Attenuation Properties of a Geometrically Nonlinear Metamaterial Design

“…Metafoundations, on the other hand, are placed beneath the structure as a support system, thus bearing its weight. In a structural-focused direction, Wenzel et al [27] study the protection of storage tanks with the use of resonant metafoundations clearly revealing the attenuation capabilities in the resulting stresses.…”

Optimal finite locally resonant metafoundations enhanced with nonlinear negative stiffness elements for seismic protection of large storage tanks

“…Eurocode 3 and 8, [14,15]). Besides this, an experimental study on the coupling e↵ects between a tank isolated with a metamaterial-based foundation and a pipeline suggested that this type of foundation may provide a compromise between base shear attenuation and horizontal displacement [16], which is a property that cannot be obtained with classical isolation systems.…”

“…From their review one can clearly conclude that one of the most pressing problems of metamaterial-based foundations is the excessive size necessary to obtain a functional foundation. However, two advantages may become attainable through such foundations in future, namely: (i) attenuation of the vertical component [5] and rocking motions [20], which cannot be addressed by traditional base isolation systems [21]; and (ii) a compromise between base shear reduction and horizontal displacement [16]. One idea to improve the performance of a metamaterial-based system was proposed by Antoniadis et al [22] who showed that a negative sti↵ness element (NSE) inserted in the resonator mechanism could potentially improve the system behaviour significantly.…”