Oil Tank Optimization

by Daniel Till

Submitted : Spring 2017

The goal of this project was to find the optimal dimensions for oil storage tanks in order to use the least amount of material. Given a certain volume, the surface area of a cylinder is used as well as the volume of a cylinder equation. After you take the derivative of the area equation with the volume equation solved for height, you then set the derived equation to zero to find the optimal radius, which then is used to find the needed height in the volume equation. The results of doing this gave a tall cylinder relative to the radius leading to height restrictions and possibly extra bracing to keep the tank stabile enough in harsh weather conditions. 

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