Silos Design Limits

I have spent my entire professional career – now approaching 43 years – at Jenike & Johanson. Working with clients to solve or prevent problems involving the storage, flow and processing of bulk solids has been both challenging and professionally rewarding.

One topic that has been of particular interest to me over the years is understanding the loads applied to the walls of silos and the ability of silos to resist those loads. Unfortunately, solids-induced loads are not easily determined or understood. As a result, silos fail with a frequency that is much higher than almost any other industrial structure.

Perhaps the first attempt to calculate pressures on silo walls was published in 1895 by the German engineer Janssen. Starting about 50 years ago, various groups around the world have made attempts to codify material-induced silo wall pressures, and that process continues today.