AbstractThis paper details the damage sustained by a number of wine tanks during the San Juan, Argentina, 1977 earthquake. The available ground motion information is used to compare the actual tank performance with that predicted. Two of the tanks examined were located quite near the two accelerographs that recorded the ground motion in the city of San Juan for the main shock. An empirical attenuation formula which describes the intensity of the shaking was derived for this earthquake and used in a quantitative evaluation of the performance of a number of other tanks. By correlating and comparing the observed performance of the anchors and what was predicted we see the predictions are upheld by the actual damage. When the anchoring system failed during the earthquake the tanks were rendered effectively unanchored. Consequently, the state of stress that results from their base uplift was then examined in conjunction with the tank wall stability approach proposed by the author, and seen to give results consistent with the observed tank wall performance.
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