Studies on thermal actions and forces in cylindrical storage silo bins

Abstract

The loads on silo bin walls consist both of static and dynamic actions caused by pressure of stored granular material and operating simultaneously thermal actions because of, say seasonal or daily fluctuations of ambient temperature. This chapter presents some chosen results of studies concerning temperature effects on silos in operation and on a large scale silo model. It has been shown that cylindrical reinforced concrete silo bins are often subjected to cyclic thermal overpressure because of ambient temperature changes. Chosen experimental values of temperature distribution in a real silo have been presented in a form of diagrams. Also wall circumferential strains measured on the silo model have been compared with the theoretical strain values derived from an appropriate Finite Element Method (FEM) model. For the needs of practical calculations the nomograms of internal forces in the cylindrical silo bin sections have been also proposed. Theoretical analysis of tangential thermal stresses in the silo bin requires considering both static and thermal loads including the grain-wall structure interaction phenomenon when the bin is subjected to rapidly decreasing temperature.