This article studies the process of relaxation of the pressure in a tank with the damaged area of the wall after pressure-testing. The authors use different methods for the diagnosis of the technical condition of objects of petroleum products storage. Pressure testing is one of nondestructive methods. The rate of pressure decrease is characteristic of the system tightness.
This article studies the cases of ground and underground location of the tank. Pressure testing involves excess pressure inside of a tank and observing its decrease. Over time, one can assess the integrity of the system. This has required creating mathematical models to account the filtration of the liquid depending on the location of the tank. The results include the analytical solution of the task and the formulas for describing the dependence of the relaxation time of pressure in the tank from the liquid and soil parameters, geometry of the tank, and the damaged portion of the wall. The two- and three-dimensional cases of liquids filtration for the case of underground location of the tank were considered. The results of some numerical calculations of the dependence of reduction time and the time of half-life pressure from the area of the damaged portion of the wall were shown. The obtained solutions allow assessing the extent of the damaged area by the pressure testing with known values of tank, liquid, and soil.