Open Access

ARTICLE

Monitoring the Oil Tank Deformations for Different Operating Conditions

Roman Shults^1,2,*, Natalia Kulichenko³, Andriy Annenkov³, Oleksandr Adamenko³

1 Interdisciplinary Research Center for Aviation and Space Exploration, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 34463, Saudi Arabia
2 Department of Aerospace Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 34463, Saudi Arabia
3 Department of Applied Geodesy, Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Kyiv, 03037, Ukraine

* Corresponding Author: Roman Shults. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Non-contact Sensing in Infrastructure Health Monitoring)

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2025, 19(6), 1433-1456. https://doi.org/10.32604/sdhm.2025.068099

Received 21 May 2025; Accepted 14 August 2025; Issue published 17 November 2025

Abstract

Oil tanks are essential components of the oil industry, facilitating the safe storage and transportation of crude oil. Safely managing oil tanks is a crucial aspect of environmental protection. Oil tanks are often used under extreme operational conditions, including dynamic loads, temperature variations, etc., which may result in unpredictable deformations that can cause severe damage or tank collapses. Therefore, it is essential to establish a monitoring system to prevent and predict potential deformations. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has played a significant role in oil tank monitoring over the past decades. However, the full extent of TLS capabilities for oil tank monitoring has not yet been thoroughly investigated. This study aims to evaluate TLS’s abilities in detecting deformations of oil tanks under various operating conditions. The paper has two objectives: first, to examine the deformations of two vertical oil tanks over six years, and second, to investigate potential deformations of the tanks’ surfaces during filling. Each tank was scanned three times—in the years 2015, 2016, and 2021. Mathematical models and appropriate software were developed to determine the achievable accuracy of TLS monitoring. The anticipated monitoring accuracy was simulated based on the design parameters of the oil tanks. This accuracy was subsequently used to differentiate between deformations and measurement errors. The tank surface was approximated utilizing the cylinder equation for each monitoring epoch. Additionally, deformations were analyzed at different cross-sections with the appropriate circular approximations. The results indicated that both tanks exhibited no significant deformations within a range of less than 20 mm. For the empty tanks, the average radius decreased by 4 mm, without any changes in shape. The total spatial inclination of the oil tanks was calculated using cylinder equations at different monitoring epochs. In the final stage, the observed deformations were employed to simulate the strain-stress conditions of the oil tanks. Thus, this paper presents a complex technology and the results of oil tank monitoring by TLS under various operating conditions.

---

Keywords

---