Underground Water Tank

This underground, circular, concrete, water tank servers the water supply needs of an animal farm, located in Larnaca district. A high strength, low porosity concrete was selected as a structural material. The structure was explicitly simulated with quadrilateral finite elements, densely meshed, so as to derive adequately accurate results. The translational stiffness of the supporting soil was calculated along three principal axes, according to the Gazetas (1991) relationships, and it was incorporated in the structural model, through the assignment of area springs. The derivation of the lateral earth pressures was based on the Rankine and Coulomb methodologies, which were comparatively assessed. The model was subjected to nonlinear analyses, in order to capture the compression-only behavior of the foundation soil.