| description abstract | Elevated steel silos commonly consist of a cylindrical shell, a conical hopper, and a skirt. At the intersection of these shell segments, a ring is often provided to sustain the high circumferential compressive stress developed. The cone/cylinder/skirt/ring junction, known as the transition, may fail by plastic collapse under the large circumferential compression. In this paper, an elastic‐plastic large‐deflection finite element analysis is employed to study the plastic collapse behavior of this junction. A typical structure is first examined to study the distribution of stresses, the effect of large deflections, the formation of a plastic collapse mechanism, and the collapse process. A simple theory proposed by Rotter, which is based on a reinterpretation of the classical limit analysis of ring‐loaded cylinders, is next outlined and its background further clarified. An improved version of Rotter's equation, which applies to a wider range of geometries, is then proposed for use in design. | |
