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Engineering Structures 39 (2012) 199–209

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Evaluation of response modification factor (R) of elevated concrete tanks

Mostafa Masoudi a,b,⇑, Sassan Eshghi b, Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany b
a
European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk (ROSE School), IUSS Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy
b
International Institute of Earthquake Engineering & Seismology (IIEES), No. 26, Arghavan Street, Tehran 19395-3913, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper discusses the failure mechanism of elevated concrete tanks with shaft and frame staging (sup-
Received 26 April 2008 porting system) along with seismic behavior of these construction types. In order to modify the current
Revised 8 February 2012 code-based seismic design methodology, computer models have been established to determine the
Accepted 9 February 2012
response modification factors, R, of the shaft and frame staging elevated tanks. The computational models
have been subjected to an ensemble of earthquake ground motions. The effects of multi-component
earthquakes, fluid–structure interaction and the P–D effects on the inelastic response of elevated tanks
Keywords:
have been studied by conducting linear and nonlinear response history analyses. According to results
Elevated tank
Earthquake response
of analyses and observed inelastic behavior during past earthquakes, the R factors for shaft and frame
Nonlinear analysis staging elevated concrete tanks have been evaluated regarding the seismicity of the site. Moreover, the
Fluid–structure interaction shortcomings associated to the current simplified seismic analysis and design procedure have been
Response modification factor addressed and a more rational modeling has been suggested especially for the shaft staging systems to
enhance distribution of the ductility demand.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Elevated water tanks are important structures in water supply
networks. They should remain operational after earthquakes for vi-
tal needs. The poor seismic performance of these inverted pendu-
lum-type constructions has been reported frequently during
major earthquakes [1–12]. Among several reasons to describe fail-
ures and damages in past earthquakes, improper design in struc-
tural elements and joints, low overall strength and ductility
capacity [8,11–13], torsional amplification of seismic response
[2,10,11,14,15] and the effect of soil–structure interaction [16–
20] have been highlighted in the previous studies. The purpose of
this paper is to explore a methodology for evaluation of the re-
sponse modification factor, R, of reinforced concrete shaft and
frame staging (supporting system) elevated tanks, which behave
in a ductile manner under seismic loads and expectedly fail in flex-
ural mode instead of shear mode. For this purpose, a shaft staging
and also a frame staging elevated concrete tank have been ana-
lyzed by linear and nonlinear response history methods for an
ensemble of earthquake ground motions. The analysis was carried
out with and without the effects of fluid–structure interaction. The
models were subjected to one, two and three correlated compo-
nents of earthquakes. In this procedure the R factor of the shaft
⇑ Corresponding author at: European School for Advanced Studies in Reduction of
Seismic Risk (ROSE School), IUSS Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy. Tel.: +39
329 3359509.
E-mail address: mmasoudi@roseschool.it (M. Masoudi).
and frame supported elevated concrete tanks have been evaluated
regarding the seismicity of the site.
2. Failure mechanism of elevated concrete tanks
The supporting system of elevated tanks mainly divided into
the two categories, i.e. shaft staging and frame staging. The differ-
ent structural properties of these two supporting systems suggest
that the damage patterns and failure mechanisms of these struc-
tures may not be identical as it was confirmed in the past earth-
quake surveys [5,7,9–11]. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate
the behavior and seismic performance of frame and shaft sup-
ported tanks separately.
2.1. Frame staging
Concrete frame staging is widely used as a supporting system
for concrete elevated tanks. For these elevated tanks if the strong
column–weak beam design strategy is adapted, where the plastic
hinges do not occur in the columns, the damage pattern will be
as shown in Fig. 1a–c. Note the failure mechanisms shown in the
pictures are non-ductile flexural-shear failure of beams; however,
the columns did not suffer major damages.
If the frame staging of an elevated tank has been designed for
seismic forces, they would be able to represent a better seismic
performance than other concrete supporting systems. Large redun-
dancy and monolithic beam–column connections result in a proper
performance under seismic forces [5,7]. However, some previous

0141-0296/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2012.02.015