The increasing occurrence of extreme events related to climate change (lightning strikes, flooding slides, sea level rise, river floods) as well as earthquakes and tornadoes represents a critical risk factor (Natural Hazard Triggering Technological Disasters - NaTech) for industrial plants’ safety and operation, as we are experiencing more and more every day.
Nowadays, several studies are available for the assessment of the NaTech risk. However, the current state of the art proposes methodologies which are of extreme importance in the research field, but either lack of practical implications, or require too sophisticated tools.
To this end, RINA investigated the impact of extreme events on a small-scale LNG depot to be located in a petrochemical and industrial area, with reference to seismic, floods, severe winds and tornadoes. The main aim of this work was the development of seismic fragility curves for the LNG tank defined through an Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) approach and including the effect of the soil-structure interaction. The fragility curves were developed considering different damage states: rotation of the foundation, failure of the connection between tank wall and piping, structural damage associated with wall failures, effects produced by the sloshing wave.
The results of the study were then used as an input for the NaTech analysis.
