Local News in Brief : Irvine : UCI Professor Tests Quake Effects on Tanks

An engineering professor at UC Irvine, using new laboratory equipment, tested the capacity of liquid storage tanks to withstand a magnitude 6 earthquake.

Medhat Haroun demonstrated some of the $1.3 million in equipment he will be using to study seismic effects on several types of tanks used to store water, oil, gas and chemicals.

This research is part of a $135,000 grant Haroun received in 1981 from the National Science Foundation in Washington.

“Interest in this started after the 1964 Alaska earthquake where tanks buckled and leaked, and in the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake, wine storage tanks collapsed,” Haroun said. The Whittier earthquake damaged some tanks, he said, “but so far we have been lucky that we haven’t had any severe damage.”

Haroun, 37, said his concern is not only with the tanks used to store hazardous materials, such as crude oil and the underground tanks at gas stations, but also water storage tanks.

Haroun’s experiments will be done in a new $7.4-million engineering laboratory. The facility contains a concrete chamber that stabilizes the equipment so only the motion from the earthquake simulators is felt.

Thursday’s demonstration involved a tank 4 feet high and 8 feet in diameter and an 18-foot steel-braced tower. Although water sloshed out onto the floor and the tank flexed back and forth and rocked from side to side it held up under the pressure.

“The hope is that a few years from now we can come up with a model that will lead to safer tanks in the future,” Haroun said.