Development of software to determine pressures in multicelularsilos with concentric and eccentric discharge

Abstract

A computer program for determining the pressures, horizontal and friction, in prismatic slender silos, with square section, eccentric hopper and mass flow, international codes taken as basis were: AS 3774 (1996), DIN 1055-6 (2005) and BS EN 1991-4 (2006) and the theories proposed by Safarian (1969) and Walker (1966). The development application was made possible by the development of a computational algorithm in programming “Borland Delphi”. The program was carried out for five silos projects with truncated pyramid form hopper considering the following eccentricities: 25%, 30%, 35% and 43%, as well as a concentric model for comparison. The computer program allowed SILOEXCENTRIC easily and quickly be applied to slender prismatic geometry of silos with concentric and eccentric hoppers. The results demonstrated the efficiency of the computer program for the proposed objectives So SILOEXCENTRIC results in pressures that are stored in files in “Notepad” format that may be accessed are generated. Besides files, various data are presented in graphical form, facilitating the assessment of horizontal pressures and friction, which proved adequate to international standards, considering the limit states.