A Simplified Approach for Analysis and Design of Reinforced Concrete Circular Silos and Bunkers

Background:

Reinforced concrete silos and bunkers are commonly used structures for large storage of different materials. These structures are highly vulnerable when subjected to intense seismic forces. Available guidelines for analysis and design of these structures require special design skills and code procedures.

Objective:

The current study is aimed to elaborate the design procedures from different sources to a unified method, which can be applied to a larger class of reinforced concrete silos. In this study, analysis and design procedures are summarized and presented in a simplified form to make sure the efficient practical design applications of reinforced concrete silos.

Method:

Four different cases of silo design based on the type and weight of stored material were considered for the study. For each case, the silo was designed using given design procedure and modeled using FEM-based computer package. All of the reinforced concrete silos were subjected to gravity, wind and seismic forces.

Results:

After performing the analysis and design of different silos, the bending moment, shear force and axial forces profiles were given for a sample silo. The results obtained from the proposed design procedure were compared with FEM values for different components of silos such as slab, wall and hopper.

Conclusion:

The comparison of tangential and longitudinal forces, bending moments, shear forces and reinforcement ratios of different parts of silos have shown a fair agreement with the FEM model results. It motivates to use the proposed design procedure for an efficient design of reinforced concrete silos.

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