Buckling resistance of vertical stiffeners of steel silos for grain storage

In steel silos fabricated from horizontally corrugated sheets, the vertical stiffeners (columns) sustain vertical forces as a result of friction of a bulk material against the silo wall. Columns are usually of cold formed steel sections. Due to the fact that stiffener failures are the most frequent cause of silos collapses, it is important to estimate accurately their resistance. The paper deals with numerical modelling of the elastic-plastic collapse of columns. Geometrically and materially nonlinear analyses (GMNIA) were carried out in which imperfections were taken into account. The imperfection forms were taken as a first buckling mode obtained in the linear buckling analysis (LBA). Amplitudes of imperfections were assumed as a =t, 2t, 3t, 4t, where t is the thickness of the stiffeners wall. It was revealed that the buckling resistance is very sensitive to the imperfection amplitude. All numerical analyses were performed by the COSMOS/M system based on FEM. Buckling resistance of all analysed stiffeners was calculated also by means of formulae inserted in Eurocode PN-EN1993-4-1. Buckling resistances obtained by the proposed numerical approach were greater than their counterparts being the result of provisions inserted in PN-EN1993-4-1 and appear to be more realistic.