Assessment of Structural Behavior, Vulnerability, and Risk of Industrial Silos: State-of-the-Art and Recent Research Trends

Abstract

This paper presents a literature compendium about the main studies on the structural behavior, vulnerability, and risk of industrial silos, as one of the most important players of different industrial processes. This study focuses on the main scientific works developed in the last decades, highlighting the more notable issues on circular steel silos as the most widespread typology in practice, such as the content–container complicated interaction, the structural and seismic response, and the several uncertainties in the design and assessment processes. Specifically, this paper proposes a near-full state-of-the-art on (i) the behavior of silos under different kinds of loads, ordinary and extreme, (ii) the effects of imperfections and the interacting structures (e.g., ring beams, supporting structures), (iii) the stored material properties, the relevant uncertainties and the impact on the silo behavior, (iv) the possible failure modes given by the focused structural configuration and the stored materials, and (v) assessment and risk mitigation strategies. Throughout the text, some considerations are provided in order to summarize the more recent research trends about steel silos and to highlight the still open issues on the risk and vulnerability reduction of these kinds of structures.

Analyzing the Structural Integrity and Efficiency of Silos: A Comparative Study of Plate Thickness Variations

“…These plates' thickness has a direct impact on the load-bearing capacity, stiffness, deformation behavior, and fatigue and buckling resistance of the silo. Changes in plate thickness have the potential to drastically affect the silo's overall behavior under various loading scenarios, which can have an effect on the silo's durability, e ciency, and safety (Khalil et al, 2022), (Kolli et al, 2023).…”

Perspective Chapter: Advances in Modern Cereal Storage Systems

“…• Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for efficient and flexible material handling in warehouses [13] • Smart conveyor systems with integrated sensors for real-time monitoring of grain flow [14] • Design optimization such as finite element analysis (FEA) of storage containers for configurative and structural optimization [15]…”

Fragility Curves for Steel Industrial Silos Accounting for Filling Level of Granular-Like Material

“…Various examples about silos with different typologies, such as elevated silos [3] and reinforced concrete silos [31] can be found in the scientific literature. However, more elaborated state-of-art about the silo structure and their behavior under different conditions is presented in [32,33].…”