Foundation for hopper bottom grain bin

[rittz]

We are designing a foundation for a hopper bottom grain bin. It is supported on 20 individual legs on cast in place concrete piles (no slab). How would you treat the grain in terms of load factors in ultimate limit state design? Bin diam. 27’ Ht 38’ capacity 17,500 bus (1086 kips.). The piles project 4’ above the grad.

 

[allgoodnamestaken]

Of course be conservative. I did a project that shares some of the same issues (although in my case it was salt rather than grain). I ended up treating the contents as live load, as I recalled that when designing oil bins we similarly treat the contents as live load.