Does anyone know of any good design resources for large (100' ID) steel storage tanks? I need to bear a truss bent on the outer ring of an existing tank and am looking for some guidance.
Thanks for the info. Adding a column would be costly and, if possible, I'd like to add stiffeners to distribute the load to reduce the localized stress below the critical stress. It seems that API and ASME might have design guides / codes that could help.
AWWA D100 and API-650 are the common standards used for tanks of that size in the US.
Generally, the shell would be able to handle a fair bit of vertical load but not a lot of radial load or rolling moment.
For straight vertical load, add a vertical stiffener, assume load distributes out at 30 degrees either side, and adjust length to get adequate load capacity at bottom.
For rolling moment, design as if you had an anchor bolt chair, see "Steel Plate Engineering Data" Vol 1&2 (combined) from AISI/SPFA.
For radial load, it gets more involved- see various vessel design handbooks or WRC-297.
There are no publications that I know of that I can refer you to for much help in this case. It's a routine problem for Storage Tank Engineers, but most of us learned this stuff on the job. If you have a specific question answer may be available.