Shell Structures: Theory and Applications, Vol.
3 – Pietraszkiewicz & Górski (Eds)
© 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-00082-7
Comparative buckling analysis of cylindrical steel silos
with flat or corrugated sheets
M. Sondej, M. Wójcik, P. Iwicki & J. Tejchman
Gdansk University of Technology, Gdańsk, Poland
ABSTRACT: The paper deals with buckling of cylindrical thin-walled slender steel silos. Silos with flat sheets
and silos with corrugated sheets strengthened by vertical columns were taken into account. The calculations
were carried out with FEM using ABAQUS. The results show that silos with corrugated sheets are significantly
more economical and less sensitive to initial geometric imperfections than silos with flat sheets.
1 INTRODUCTION
Silos are engineering structures widely used in indus-
tries and farms to store, feed and process bulk
solids that is essential to agricultural, mining, mineral
processing, chemical, shipping and other industries
(Safarian & Harris 1985). They are mainly built of
concrete, steel and aluminium. In spite of extensive
experimental and theoretical studies of silo problems,
silos fail with a frequency much higher than the
rate of structural failure of other industrial structures
(Dogangun et al. 2009, Tejchman & Wójcik 2011).
Metal silos can be built of isotropic thin-walled flat
sheets which may be welded, riveted or screwed or
of thin-walled horizontally or vertically corrugated
sheets strengthened by vertical columns distributed
uniformly around the silo circumference and con-
nected by means of screws. In metal silos with flat
sheets, the silo thickness is calculated to resist horizon-
tal tensile stresses caused by the normal wall pressure
and vertical compressive stresses caused by the wall
friction force due to the stored bulk solid. The required
thickness of slender cylindrical silo shells due to hori-
zontal tensile stresses is significantly smaller than due
to vertical compressive stresses. The wall thickness
depends on the silo diameter, horizontal wall pressure,
steel strength and buckling coefficient which takes
into account geometric imperfections (Rotter 2001). In
silos made of corrugated sheets and vertical columns,
horizontally corrugated wall sheets solely carry hor-
izontal tensile stresses but provide a lateral elastic
foundation for vertical columns which carry vertical
compressive stresses. The buckling strength depends
on their bending stiffness in the plane perpendicular
to the wall and on the bending stiffness of wall sheets
between vertical columns (Wójcik et al. 2011, Iwicki
et al. 2011).
The numerical results presented in this paper con-
cern a comparative buckling analysis of two different
cylindrical steel silo structures of the same size: a
235
silo with flat sheets and a silo with corrugated sheets
and thin-walled open vertical column profiles placed
around the silo perimeter. The second silo was a
real structure built in Poland (Wójcik et al. 2011).
Silos were subjected to wall pressure induced by
wheat according to Eurocode 1 (2008). All numerical
calculations were performed with the aid of the com-
mercial FE code ABAQUS (2010). Such comparative
calculations have not been performed yet.
2 INPUT DATA
Silos with the diameter of 5.35 m and height of 21.48 m
were considered. The cross-section area of the bin was
22.48 m2 and the perimeter 16.81 m. The silo with cor-
rugated sheets was made of 890 mm high steel rings
with the constant thickness of 0.75 mm along the entire
height. The rings were connected with 18 columns uni-
formly distributed around the bin perimeter with the
aid of screws (Wójcik et al. 2011). The columns were
fixed to the foundation. In turn, the silo with flat sheets
consisted of 24 rings 890 mm high. Its wall thickness
varied between 56.4 mm (bottom ring) and 0.8 mm
(top ring). The wall thickness was chosen in order to
obtain the same critical load based on a linear buck-
ling analysis (LBA) for the silo with corrugated sheets.
The silo with corrugated sheets was twice lighter
than the steel silo with flat ones.
Numerical analyses were performed with silos sub-
jected to the wall pressure due to the bulk solid.
The extreme characteristic mechanical properties for
wheat are presented in Table 1. The wall pressure dis-
tribution after filling was determined by the formulae
from Eurocode 1 (2008)
 Table 1. Extreme characteristic properties of wheat.

Parameter mean lower upper

γ 7.5 9.0
φr 34
φi 30 26.8 33.6
K 0.54 0.49 0.60
µ ‘flat’ 0.38 0.33 0.44
µ ‘corrugated’ 0.47 0.62

with Figure 1. Horizontal wall pressure ph and vertical wall

traction (pw ) according to Eurocode 1 (2008) in silo with
flat and corrugated sheets.

A silo with corrugated walls included beam ele-

ments B31 to simulate vertical columns and shell
elements S4 (with the full integration) which had
orthotropic properties of real corrugated sheets. The
sheet stiffnesses were calculated by the following
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formulae in Eurocode 3 (2009)

where A = the cross-sectional silo area, γ = the unit
solid weight, K = the lateral pressure ratio; phf = the
horizontal pressure during filling, ph0 = the asymp-
totic horizontal pressure at a great depth, pwf = the
wall frictional traction during filling, U = the inter-
nal silo perimeter, z = the depth below the equivalent
solid surface, z0 = the Janssen characteristic depth and
µ = the wall friction coefficient between the solid and
wall.
The normal wall pressure ph and shear traction pw
along the silo wall as a function of the solid depth z
are shown for both silos in Figure 1. In order to obtain
the maximum shear traction, the upper wall friction
coefficient µu and lateral pressure ratio Ku were used.
Due to the presence of the hopper with an independent
supporting structure, the material loads were applied
only to the level of z = 16.72 m.
Buckling analyses were performed with silos during
emptying. The standard coefficients which increase
the wall pressure during emptying were 1.1 for vertical where C = the stretching stiffness (per unit width),
and 1.15 for horizontal loads, respectively. A patch D = the flexural stiffness (per unit width), d = the
load was taken into account following the Eurocode corrugation height, G = the shear modulus and
recommendations to account for asymmetries during l = the fold length.
filling and emptying. It was 1 m high and placed at the The total number of finite elements was 15 000.
silo mid-height (Eurocode 1, 2008). In FE-calculations of both silo models, the hopper
and roof were omitted due to their negligible impact
on results. Linear buckling analyses (LBA) and non-
3 NUMERICAL FE MODEL linear static analyses (GNIA) were performed with
initial geometric imperfections assumed in the form
A silo with flat sheets was composed of 57 000 finite of the first eigen-mode of silo structures (Wójcik
shell elements S4R5 (Hibbitt et al. 1998). The large et al. 2011). In GNIA analyses, the arc-length con-
number of finite elements was necessary to obtain the trol technique by Riks was used with the maximum
realistic solution convergence and the exact critical load increase smaller than 5% of the total silo load.
shell load according to Timoshenko

4 FE RESULTS

The FE results of the linear (LBA) and non-linear

where E = the modulus of elasticity, v = the Poisson’s (GNIA) analyses are shown in Figures 2–6. The buck-
ratio, r = the silo radius and t = the wall thickness. ling load was expressed in the form of a multiplication

236

Figure 2. Deformed silo walls: a) with flat sheets (LBA
analysis) b) with corrugated sheets (LBA analysis) c) with
corrugated sheets (GNIA analysis, initial imperfection ampli-
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tude w = 10 cm).
Figure 3. The buckling load factor λ at various amplitude
w of initial geometric imperfections (LBA analysis).
factor of the acting horizontal wall load. The silo buck-
ling of a silo with flat sheets, obtained from LBA,
took place in a lower silo part (up to 4 m from the silo
bottom) at one side only. It had a purely local charac-
ter (Fig. 2a). The buckled silo with corrugated sheets
(Fig. 2b) included three half-waves in vertical direction
and 5 half-waves in circumferential direction. Using
the non-linear analysis (GNIA), the buckled shape dif-
fered (Fig. 2c) as compared with LBA as a result of
a non-linear structural behaviour (Fig. 5). In contrast
to a linear buckling analysis, the maximum deforma-
tion (Fig. 2c) was obtained at a higher level above
the silo bottom. The buckling load factor from both
LBA and GNIA analyses for perfect silos was 8.36.
The LBA (Fig. 3) and GNIA (Fig. 4) results indicate
a higher sensitivity to imperfections of a silo with
flat sheets. The buckling load factor with the initial
imperfection amplitude w corresponding to the usual
silo class performance (w = 0.77 cm) was λ = 1.11
for flat and λ = 0.74 for corrugated sheets, while the
FE outcomes of LBA at w = 0.77 cm were: λ = 3.0
237
Figure 4. The buckling factor λ at various amplitude w of
initial geometric imperfections (GNIA analysis).
Figure 5. Load factor-deflection curves from GNIA buck-
ling analyses in silo with corrugated sheets.
(flat sheets) and λ = 8.3 (corrugated sheets), respec-
tively. Thus, the buckling load factor with flat sheets
was 2.5 times higher and with corrugated sheets 10
times higher than this according to Eurocode 3. When
comparing silos with corrugated and flat sheets using
GNIA at w = 0.77 cm (Fig. 4), it can be seen that in
spite of a double smaller weight, a silo with corrugated
sheets has a higher buckling strength by the factor 2.
A silo with corrugated walls had two critical points
along the equilibrium path (Fig. 5). The first critical
point was more sensitive to the imperfection amplitude
than the second one, which was equal to the limit silo
load (Fig. 6).
The reason for a small impact of the initial imper-
fection amplitude on a global stability of silos with
corrugated sheets was the application of beam finite
elements to simulate silo columns which were insen-
sitive to a local stability loss. Silos with corrugated
walls are often built with the aid of thin-walled open
sectional profiles wherein local effects are important.
Modelling columns made of these profiles with the

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Figure 6. Limit points in a silo with corrugated sheets.
help of shell elements allows solely for considering a
possible local silo stability loss (Wojcik et al. 2011).
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a comparative buckling analysis
of two silos with a different wall structure. Based on
numerical FE analyses it can be concluded that silos
made from corrugated sheets and vertical columns,
have higher strength by the factor 2 than silos with flat
walls. Therein, their weight is twice smaller. Moreover,
they are less sensitive to initial geometric imperfec-
tions. An additional advantage of silos with corrugated
walls is that the collapse does not occur rapidly (due to
a stable equilibrium path after reaching the first limit
point). The buckling strength of silos calculated with
a nonlinear analysis is lower than with a linear buck-
ling analysis for all initial imperfection amplitudes, in
238
particular for low ones. Silos with corrugated walls
are also easy to be assembled due to their prefabrica-
tion. It should be also pointed out that beam elements
may be used in FE analysis in the case of columns
which are insensitive to local buckling. Otherwise,
shell elements have to be used.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Research works were performed with the financial
support from the Polish National Centre for Research
(project No. 020099).
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