Bülent Erkmen Has Succeeded The First Fp7 Marie Curie IIF Project of Özyeğin University

7th Framework Programme (FP7) Marie Curie Special Program International Incoming Fellowship (IIF) aims to encourage the researchers, residing / working in the developed countries outside Europe such as the United States, Canada, and Japan to reintegrate to the Europe. In this respect, IIF holders do not only gain an international prestigious but also get support for their research.

Assist. Prof. Dr. Bülent Erkmen’s project proposal called “Seismic Analysis of Liquid-Storage Tanks with a focus on Tank-Base Uplift” (Lifting Tanks) has been submitted in July 2013 and was favourably evaluated by the by the European Commission and recommended for funding.

Dr. Erkmen, the faculty member of Civil Engineering Department has achieved a major success by winning the Özyeğin University’s first IIF project. Dr. Erkmen’s success also lies in the competitive nature of the programme that “Lifting Tanks” is one of the few successful IIF projects supported from Turkey.

Lifting Tanks Abstract:

Liquid-storage tanks are crucial parts of industrial facilities and public water supply systems. Earthquake damage to tanks in earthquake prone regions can result in severe social, economic, and environmental problems since they are used to store crucial liquids such as water for drinking and fire fighting, petroleum products, and fertilizers.

Tank-base uplift seismic provisions have very little technical verification, become less accurate as the displacement increases, and generally not included in the codes. The literature on seismic performance of tanks indicates that there is an urgent need to evaluate applicability of current seismic provisions and to develop tools for calculating tank-base uplift and its effects on seismic performance of tanks. This is the main objective of the proposed research. Detailed 3D tank finite element (FE) models considering liquid-structure interaction will be developed and verified. The FE models will be used to investigate seismic performance of various liquid-storage tanks using a large number of earthquake records using time-history analysis. A parametric study including effects of earthquake characteristics, tank geometry and liquid content level, and tank site soil properties will be performed. The results will be used to distinguish effects of individual parameters, evaluate adequacy of spring-mass mechanical models and seismic design provisions of tanks from various international codes, and develop simple models for predicting tank-base uplift and its effects on seismic performance of liquid-storage tanks.