Experimental Study On Bracket-Supported Steel Silos

Steel silos are widely used for the storage of bulk solids in industry.The connection of a bracket support to a cylindrical metal silo shell is a most often used column-supported silo,whose structure is usually simple and economicfor small silos.This paper presents an experimental study on the two bracket -supported steel silo models, and analyses the two models using non-linear finite element analyses.Thus more deep understanding of this kind of silo is expected to achieved after these performences.Careful tri-dimension surveys of the two models' initial geometric imperfections were carried out using the shell imperfection test system which is based on a laser displacement meter,and both the one-dimensional Fourier decomposition and two- dimensional Fourier decomposition were co -nducted to analysis the surveyed imperfections.The static pressure experiment is conducted on the two specimens to obtain complete understanding the rule of the strain distribution, The whole curve of stress-strain under the pressure load of the experiment model is got,and failure models of the silos is directly investigated. The experimental results show that obvious stress concentration occurred in the vicinity which lies on the brackets,but the stress concentration has little influence on the circumferential strain. The specimens'deformation when they failed mainly occurred in the vicinity of the brackets and the transitions which connect the cylinder shell and the hopper.The two experimental specimens were modelled using the commmerical finite-element package ANSYS,and geometrically and materially non-linear analyses (GMNA) were peformed on the two models,the effect of the surveyed initial imperfection on the silos was investigated ,as well.Though the structural behavior of column supported steel silos are very complicated,we can accurately analyse the failure model and the bearing capacity by using appropriate finite-element model.The analytic results show that the bracket support steel silos are generally geometric imperfection insensitive.but the surveyed initial geometric imperfections play an important part in accurate modelling the defomation of the specimens.