Steel silos are containers to store large amounts of material, like e.g. granular solids, liquids or gas on a fairly small area. They are often cylindrically shaped and thin-walled. Due to the weight of the upper structure and in the case of granular solids sliding friction resp. sticking of the bulk material to the silo walls these are subjected to axial loading. Therefore the thin-walled structure may buckle in the lower part.

The application of transient Finite Element Analyses on silo buckling behavior is investigated in this paper. Starting with a brief description of experiments performed in order to obtain a Finite Element model with only limited uncertainties, standard static stability analysis is presented and discussed critically. Due to the problems with the static approach - interpretation of the post-critical behavior and numerical determination of post-buckling branches - transient analyses are performed to simulate the real experiments, for which recorded data are available. Finally, aspects of the transient approach to parallel computations are discussed.

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £70 +P&P)