Seismic response of tanks in view of shell theory

Seismic design-due to the high magnitude of accelerated fluid mass-will often dominate the design of tanks. Compared to the complex structural condition of the tank under seismic action the present design codes, like API Standard 650 or Eurocode 8-4 (EN 1998-4) provide a rather small set of simple checks of specific parts of the tank. These checks are built up in a way which relieves designers from the ‘‘troublesome’’ idea of considering the tank in context with the complexity of shell theory.