Simulating stacked water tanks

[meyer.dale.83]

Hi all.

How would one go about simulating the effects of stacking a number of plastic water tanks on top of each other, to determine if they will buckle, deform, split or burst, etc? Would you assign a water material to all tanks and simulate only with gravity turned on or would you place hydrostatic pressure on all internal surfaces of all the tanks? or would you use both a water material and hydrostatic pressure? I am purely interested in the effect on the bottom tank, with all tanks being identical.

A simple example would be 4 or 5 rectangular tanks stacked on top of each other, similar to attached image.

[John_Holtz · Accepted solution]

Hi @meyer.dale.83

I would model the bottom tank only.

1. The material for the tank has to be whatever the tank is made from.
2. The water in the tank would be simulated with a hydrostatic pressure. (No need to make the analysis larger or more complicated than necessary by modeling the water as a different body. Modeling the water as a body would not be the correct approach anyway because it is hard to simulate something that has no strength, like water, in the same model as something that has strength, like a tank. )
3. The weight of N tanks above the bottom tank would be a force applied to the top of the bottom tank. No need to make the analysis way larger or more complicated than necessary.)

Using this approach, you can analyze the bottom tank with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .... how ever many tanks you want on top by simply changing the force applied to the top of the bottom tank.

[Anonymous]

Thank you kindly Mr Holtz

Your quick response is much appreciated. Will save me pulling my hair out, for now at least 🙂