Structural system and buckling design of cellular steel silos

Large steel silos are widely used to store huge quantities of granular solids in industry and agriculture. In the present analysis, a novel type of silo structure, designated the cellular silo, is proposed and discussed. The performance advantage of the cellular silo is the clustered construction of individual hexagon silos, which can be formed by different numbers and arrangements of cell silos. The structural system is firstly determined for the cell silo by comparison between the plate model and 3D-stiffened plate models, and it is shown that the 3D-stiffened plate assembly composed of shell elements and beam elements is feasible for the cell silo, which is quite distinct from the shell structure fit for circular silos. The horizontal solid pressure, which is beneficial to circular silos, is unfavourable to the buckling of cell silos, and the buckling design is governed mainly by the horizontal pressure rather than the vertical frictional pressure. The buckling behaviour of group silos is investigated by considering load cases defined by the number of working cell silos and their relative position in the group. The common features of group silos during buckling are summarized, and it is referential for structural design of a cellular silo. An illustrative example of a cellular silo is presented at the end to demonstrate the design procedure, and it is concluded that the buckling design of the cellular silo is governed by the full loading condition and can be completed by optimization of the cell silos and their combinations.