An industrial site visit to M11 Industries at Padubidri, Mangalore,  for students of Mtech Structures, Construction Management and Environmental, Department of Civil Engineering, MIT was organised on 9th November 2022.

Dr Premanand Shenoy and Mr Yashwanth accompanied students to the storage tank area and explained about the purpose and specification of storage tanks. These tanks will be used to store edible and non-edible oils. Out of which, 17 tanks will be used for storing non-edible oils and 9 tanks for edible oils.

For these tanks, special type of foundation was provided which was the Ring Wall Foundation. The inner core of the foundation was filled with rubble soling at the bottom and all the above consecutive layers were compacted with river sand.

Mr Ajith, who was the main steel fabricator for this project, explained about the built-up sections using plates. These built-up sections were used because these huge sizes of sections are not available in the market. He also explained about the types of weldings done in steel fabrication works like S.A.W, ARC, MIG Welding. In this project, Submerged Arc Welding (SAW) was done. 

Other informations briefed to the students includes:

The loading and unloading unit is a complete steel structure with columns of I-sections and channel sections that were welded face-to-face and converted to a box sections. The electrical room is a combined structure of RCC and steel. Hume concrete pipes were used for piping. The roof has an inclination of 120 to accommodate solar panels because the Mangalore region has a latitude of 120, and another reason is to avoid external live loads. Fire water tanks are used for storing water during fire hazards and used for generating steam for boilers. The storage block is a PEB (Pre-Engineered Building). The roof is made of galvanised aluminium steel. A special storage tank was constructed to store Class-A products and a special type of wall, called dyke walls, was constructed. The purpose of dyke walls is to prevent spillage of flammable liquids into other units. The oil refinery is a majority of steel structure with 42-meter height. The main purpose of this unit is to hold refinery machinery such as reactors, distillators, deodorizers, etc. The packing block is the unit where final packaging takes place, here the centre columns are made up of RCC and the rest of the whole structure is of steel. In the centre, two columns are placed adjacent to each other to resist the lateral sway of the whole structure and to provide more stiffness. Flexible payment is to be constructed according to NHAI specifications, using 19-inch boulders that can bear the load of 40–50 tonnes on the trucks.