Why are Hot Water Tanks Cylindrical ?

Why are Hot Water Tanks Cylindrical ?

Why are hot water tanks cylindrical in shape ? Is there any reason behind it ?

I think because cylindrical shape is easier to fabricate and more stronger.

A large contributing factor lies in the amount of water it can hold (volume).

Take a rectangular shaped HWT that measures 40W x 60L x 20D (wide, long and deep); its volume is 48,000 units.

Take a cylinder with the same dimmensions 60L x 40W (we can ignore depth here); its volume is 75,398 units.

As we can see the cylinder offers 157% more volume then the cubed HWT. In greater dimmensions, like mentioned above, you can hold greater volumes of water in the same area.

Realisticly, the cylinder is not any stronger then a cube would be; (my apologies to the last person who replied) just comes down to how much volume can it hold compared to its area.