EFFECT OF FLEXURAL AND MEMBRANE STIFFNESSES ON THE ANALYSIS OF FLOATING ROOFS

With the aim of extending the use of integrated variational principles on fluid and deck plate to the large deflection analysis of floating roofs, this paper investigates the significance of the flexural and membrane components in the formulations of the deck plate. Applying integrated variational principles on deck plate and fluid facilitate the treatment of the compatibility of deformation between floating roof and supporting liquid. Analysis results showed that different assumptions about deck plate formulation were commonly used in the literature which resulted in considerably different deflection and stress patterns on the floating roof. The results showed that modeling of the deck plate as a flexural element rather than membrane, by eliminating the need for nonlinear analysis, gave reasonable results for deflections and stresses in the deck plate. Finally, a simple and efficient procedure using linear finite element code analyzes of the floating roofs, considering only the flexural stiffness was developed.