SILOS

SPECIAL STRUCTURES
Sildos are special structures for storing of granular and powdery materials
(without cohesion) for a period of time, to preserve and conserve them in
good condition. Unlike warehouses, silos are composed of cells with big
deep, requiring a relatively small area of land. In silos cells are stored
materials as cereals, grains, cement, sugar, flour and other finished or
semi-finished granular state (without cohesion).
 Compared with bunkers, silos cells are much higher because they must have
high capacity storage. Basically, in terms of designing, will consider silos those
constructions with the ratio between cell height and the largest dimension of
the section plane greater than 1.5. Under these conditions, the friction between
stored material and cell walls can no longer be neglected.
 From the technological point of view silos can be classified by
capacity and nature of the stored material:
a) in terms of capacity silos can be:
low-capacity silos with capacity of a cell is between 10-50 m3;
medium- capacity silos with cell capacity between 50-250 m3;
high-capacity silos - cell whose capacity exceeds 250 m3;
b) after stored material: grain silos; Flour silos; Sugar silos; seed
silos; cement silos; ore silos; etc.
SILO COMPONENTS
Silos consist of the following main parts: cells (with upper floor and
columns), elevator house, upper gallery, lower gallery funnels and
foundations. For certain silos, some components may be missing (such as
columns).
The cross-section of the cells can be circular, square, rectangular,
hexagonal or other polygonal shape. Rectangular and square cells are
rationally from functional point of view (better usage of the land and
columns can be disposed at the intersections of the walls). The maximum
dimension for the cells is usually 5 m. Larger dimensions induce significant
bending moments in walls. Circular cells are most commonly used because
of their advantages: simple stress diagrams, simple reinforcing system,
easy to prestress.
 The bottom part of the cell can be conceived in different ways. The choice
of different systems depends on the stored material. For cement, for
example, discharging is made by pneumatic systems and the bottom part
can be made of a concrete floor located directly on the ground. For
materials such as gravel or sand bottom can be made as an inclined plane
in such a way as to discharge material to flow directly into the wagon or
other transportation vehicle. For other materials the unload is usually
made by conical or pyramidal funnel.
 Lower gallery can be disposed on a single level or on two
levels. The structure of lower gallery is composed by cell walls
themselves, which continues to the foundations, or concrete
columns who carry loads from the cells. Layout and number
of columns depends on the size of the cells cells and loads. The
number of columns for each cell is between 4 and 12. From
technological reasons, the number of column must be reduced
as much as possible.
The elevator house include equipment for vertical transport
of the stored material. The structure is made usually from
reinforced concrete frames or structural walls.