FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND BUILDING ENGINEERING

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Course Unit; Advanced Structural Mechanics

Academic year: 2021/22

Assignment 03

Model a water tank, show the representation of an elastic foundation, and

produce an output of results including deflection, Shear force, and
Moments.

Name Reg. Number

JAMES SSALI 21/U/GMES/14615/PE

1|Page
Solution

An empty reinforced concrete water tank was modeled in SAP 2000 v22.
Tabulated below are the different sizes of the slab and the walls.

Element Dimension details

Walls 3m high cantilever
0.25m thick
Slab 500mm thick

Assumptions

1. The internal dimensions of the tank are 18m x 6m

2. The slab on grade is supported partly on soil and partly by the walls of the
tanks (Upstand beams)
3. Winkler subgrade reaction will be used to simulate soil while perfect hinges
will be used to simulate the side walls.
4. Coefficient of subgrade reaction to be 10000 kPa/m
5. Concrete grade C30/37

Procedure

a) The material and area section properties are defined as stated above.
b) The area section properties 0.45m and 0.25m are then assigned to the
slabs and walls respectively.

2|Page
Figure 1 Model of the water tank (Slab on grade)

c) The loads cases that is the dead and modal load cases are defined.
d) The slab on grade is discretized into elements of 0.5m x 0.5m.
e) The nodes on the edges (long side) were assigned as hinges while the
internal nodes are assigned as area springs.
f) Run analysis to obtain the deflections, shear forces and bending moments

3|Page
Figure 2 Discretized slab

Figure 3 Hinges assigned to nodes on long edges

4|Page
Figure 4 Area springs assigned to internal nodes

Figure 5 Deformed shape of the slab

5|Page
Figure 6 Maximum Shear forces

Figure 7 Shear forces for the dead load case

6|Page
Figure 8 Bending moments for the dead load case

Figure 9 Maximum bending moments

7|Page