The East Asia-Pacific Conference on Structural Engineering & Construction (EASEC)
Abstract
Silo is an economical design for storing large quantities of granular solids or fluids. A smaller silo structure is often built with a cylindrical steel shell and several local brackets. For such a structure installed in seismic zone, it has to resist to external excitation and internal impact from media. Since buckling is one of the main failure type of silo, researches focus often on the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of an empty steel container under earthquake. The dynamic behavior of internal granular solids under seismic loading is close to liquid flow, and the impact force of the internal media on silo wall is related to its dynamic liquid pressure. That is, the silo-granular solid system is a complex structure-granular media interaction system. In this study, the Discrete Element Analysis (DEA) was used to evaluate the influence of internal granular solids on the shell wall of silo structure. After systematic verifications, it has been shown that the DEA is feasible on research for more detailed simulations of silo with granular solids under seismic loading
