Giovanni Fabbrocino

Seismic risk of atmospheric storage tanks in the framework of quantitative risk analysis

Abstract The quantitative risk assessment of industrial facilities is based on integrated procedures to quantify human, environmental and economical losses related to relevant accidents. Accordingly, seismic risk analysis has to be integrated in order to obtain reliable results. In this work, some considerations regarding the intensity and probability of occurrence of earthquakes and the vulnerability of atmospheric storage tanks subjected to seismic actions are given. Structural vulnerability based on observational data has been processed in the form of “probit analysis”, a simple and useful statistic tool. Suggestions concerning industrial seismic-related accidental scenarios are also given.

Fragility of standard industrial structures by a response surface based method

National and international regulatory standards require industrial risk assessment, taking into account natural hazards including earthquakes, in the framework of Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA). Seismic fragility analysis of industrial components may be carried out similarly as what has been done for buildings, even though some peculiar aspects require the development of specific tools. In the present paper a contribution to the definition of a rational procedure for seismic vulnerability assessment of standardised industrial constructions in a probabilistic framework is given. The method covers a range of components of the same structural type. Seismic reliability formulation for structures is used. Both seismic capacity and demand are considered probabilistic with the latter assessed by dynamic analyses. The application example refers to shell elephant foot buckling of unanchored sliding tanks. A regression-based method is applied to relate fragility curves to parameters varying in the domain of variables for structural design.