BUCKLING EXPERIMENTS ON TRANSITION RINGS IN ELEVATED STEEL SILOS

摘要

Large elevated steel silos for the storage of bulk solids general consist of a cylindrical vessel, a conical discharge hopper and a skirt. The cone-cylinder-skirt junction is subject to a large circumferential compressive force which is derived from the horizontal component of the meridional tension in the hopper, so either a ring is provided or the shell walls are locally thickened to strengthen the junction. Many theoretical studies haw examined the buckling and collapse strengths of these junctions, but no previous experimental study has been reported due to the great difficulties associated with testing these thin-shell junctions at model scale. This paper presents the results of a series of tests on cone-cylinder-skirt-ring junctions in steel silos under simulated bulk solid loading. In addition to the presentation of test results including geometric imperfections and failure behavior, the determination of buckling modes and loads based on displacement measurements is examined.