Design and Analysis of Compartment Silo

Abstract

Working to the fast pace of development that is to be taken care of by professional engineers and globalization of professional services to be rendered, it becomes important to appraise them in the area of design for industrial structures, which has a wide spectrum to be dealt with.

There has been a rapid change due to industrial advancement requiring different type of structures like bunkers and silos. Bunker and silo is one of the storage structure required for industrial plants to store various types of materials such as coal, grains, cement etc. Hence it is necessary to appraise regarding the design procedures for such structures which includes the study of codal provisions leading to analysis and design along with detailing of the same.

From last few decades, there is a considerable advancement in manufacturing technologies for various industries. With progressive increase in size of raw and finished material for manufacturing units there is a corresponding increase in size of storage unit also.

Particularly in cement manufacturing industries due to the changed market conditions regarding the availability and supply of cement, it is now becoming common to produce different types of cement in the same cement factory, so as to improve marketability and profitability. This has necessitated introduction of multi-section silo, which has the facility of storing different types of cement and using the same extraction system.

One of the major problems faced in the cement factory is that of cement getting set in the silos, choking the extraction system. As the silo is needed for continuous storage and extraction, maintenance becomes problematic. In a multi-section silo, same type of cement can be stored in more than one compartment, and while storing and extracting operations are done in one section, the other sections could be emptied, cleaned and maintained. The study undergone is the step in the direction to give relevant technical information about the detailed designing methods using STAAD.Pro.2004 for the analysis of 6 compartment silo.

It is difficult to get all necessary information in one compact volume and hence, an effort has been made to give relevant technical information, illustrating the theoretical background and codal provisions along with detail design procedures, normally to be followed. The given information will serve as a first reference to deal with design of such structures; however, one should go through various other references to have an in-depth understanding to enable to design efficiently such structures.