engleski

Stability Studies of Water Towers’ Vertical Flanges

High reinforced-concrete water towers are commonly used for water storage in the low regions. Water tanks, with a big storage capacity, are placed at the top. Middle carrying part has to be stable enough and to secure the overall structural stability. To set the whole area under tank as a carrying element is not economically sound and is ugly from the architectural standpoint. Therefore, thin vertical flanges are radially placed around the central tubular part as buttresses. The vertical loads from the tank are transferred through the central part and flanges that secure the overall space stability. The flanges are exposed to high vertical and horizontal loads and their design is complicated as the problems of their out-of-plane and overall structural stability are coming together. In order to study this problem scaled model studies of the water tower’s middle part were made. The models were exposed to incrementally increasing vertical loads. Out-of-plane deformations of the flanges were registered and critical buckling forces and forms were determined. Then the sophisticated analytical model of the overall structure has been done. Critical buckling loads of the scaled experimental model and that of sophisticated numerical model correlated very well. Model studies gave good sense of the load carrying ability for a full-scale structure. Numerical models were calibrated on the experimental model’s results and were then used to study the influence of various parameters on the flange’s and overall structural stability.

water tower; vertical flanges; and experimental model; buckling analysis; comparison

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