Development and Validation of Predictive Model to Describe the Growth of Concrete Water Tank Vulnerability with Time

Abstract

In the field of civil engineering, concrete water tanks, considered as hydraulic structures, take a special place among constructions. These tanks subjected to harsh natural conditions and to hydrodynamic loads, age and deteriorate. In order to predict the degradation and ageing level that can occur in these structures, the concept of vulnerability to natural hazards, based on the assessment of vulnerability index (I_V) is used. We develop in this paper a predictive model which describes the growth of tank vulnerability with time. This numerical model is built by using numerical analysis methods, where an approximate function I_V(t) is developed in order to translate the evolution of the vulnerability at any time during the life cycle of a tank. As the vulnerability index of a tank is known only at certain ages of its life cycle, the approached function I_V(t) is approximate by a finite element modelling on this known domain, but it is extrapolated by an exponential model in the unknown domain. To resolve the different equations developed in this work, Matlab^® software had been used. The predictive model obtained has been applied to tanks of Tizi Ouzou region (Northern Algeria), and results showed that it could simulate and predict well the vulnerability index.