Abstract
The conventional design method of upright cylindrically shaped grain storage silos, both made of reinforced concrete (RC) and steel, is based on the approximation that long-term major loadings are horizontal grain pressure and vertical loading which are the sum of the frictional force of grain (including the loading and unloading impact effect), the self weight and the overburden due to the weight of the roof equipment. On the othe hand, main horizontal force is asumed to be induced by the shor-term loads, such as earthquake, and wind loadings. In computing the design sectional forces, the simple estimation method of membrane ring tension neglecting the bending moment due to the longitudinal variation of pressure and bending moment due to horizontal load, which assumes a silo as a beam, avoids the complex mechanical analysis of cylindrical shell.
In this paper, although the loadings are limited to the grain pressure, the cylindrical shell analysisis used to obtain exact sectional forces, and is compared to the conventional methods in both RC and steel silo for typical grain silos. As a result, some engineering findings related to sectional design of both types of silos are discussed.
