High reinforced-concrete
water towers are commonly used for water storage in the low regions. Water tanks,
with
a big storage capacity, are placed at the top. Middle carrying part has to
be stable enough and to secure the overall structural stability. To set the
whole area under tank as a carrying element is not economically sound and is
ugly from the architectural standpoint. Therefore, thin
vertical flanges are
radially placed around the central tubular part as buttresses. The vertical
loads from the tank are transferred through the central part and flanges that
secure the overall space stability. The flanges are exposed to high vertical
and horizontal loads and their design is complicated as the problems of their
out-of-plane and overall structural stability are coming together. In order to
study this problem scaled model studies of the water tower’s middle part were
made. The models were exposed to incrementally increasing vertical loads.
Out-of-plane deformations of the flanges were registered and critical buckling
forces and forms were determined. Then the sophisticated analytical model of
the overall structure has been done. Critical buckling loads of the scaled
experimental model and that of sophisticated numerical model correlated very
well. Model studies gave good sense of the load carrying ability for a
full-scale structure. Numerical models were calibrated on the experimental
model’s results and were then used to study the influence of various parameters
on the flange’s and overall structural stability.