Silo Collapse: An Experimental Study

The purpose of this experimental work is to develop some basic insight into the pre-buckling behavior and the buckling transition toward plastic collapse of a granular silo by studying different patterns of deformation generated on thin paper cylindrical shells during granular discharge. We study the collapse threshold considering the influence of the bed heights, flow rates and grain sizes. We compare the patterns that appear during the discharge of spherical beads, with those obtained in the axially compressed cylindrical shells. When the height of the granular column is close to the collapse threshold, we observe a ladder like pattern that rises around the cylinder surface in a spiral path of diamond shaped localizations, and develops into a plastic collapsing fold that grows around the collapsing silo.