Seismic horizontal forces exerted by granular material on flat bottom silos: experimental and analytical results

Seismic response of grain-silos still presents strong uncertainties and open issues. For this reason, seismic design of silos is not yet consolidated as the design in static conditions (filling and discharging scenarios) and current design codes tend to provide too conservative formulations for the estimation of the seismic actions induced by the stored material. Experimental tests have been conducted during the last decades, including shaking table tests on silo specimens for better understand the coupled behaviour of grain-silos. Recently, the authors proposed a theory for the evaluation of the horizontal seismic forces exerted by granular material on silos. Starting from that theory, the present study provides a set of simplified code-like formula for the evaluation of the main seismic horizontal forces acting on the silo wall. A comparison with shaking-table test results and with the actual code provisions is presented.