Load bearing capacity of a 40' seacan

[Zoobie777]

I have designed several roof truss systems for garages/storage buildings constructed with seacans as the 'walls'. They are increasingly popular, especially with homesteaders. Most of the time the trusses bear on the walls with a sill plates running up the 40' (or 20') sides. We have a customer asking for a 4' spacing option for a roof with a 40' clear span between the containers. This is resulting in bearing reactions on the inside bearings of 5200 lbf unfactored/7300 lbf factored. While the building design is outside of my scope, I am wondering if there is a maximum point load for this type of construction. Will a single or double SPF plate distribute the load sufficiently? I found out what the weight of a seacan roof can hold (~57000 lbs) but not sure how that translates into max plf for the wall. Also, is there an appreciable difference in capacity between a normal seacan (8'-6" tall) and a high cube (9'-6" tall)?

Thanks for any info/advice you may have.

Cheers!

 

[XR250]

I suppose another thing to watch is to make sure the thrust at the truss bearings doesn't just push the seacans over.

Maybe finally a good use for the Simpson slidy clips?

 

[canwesteng]

I'm curious about the FEA approach for sea can design. Suppose you are comparing principal stresses to some published values for buckling for corrugated steel?

 

[KootK]

I felt as though what I was seeing was the kind of FEM that predicts the buckling capacity internally. Big models.

 

[canwesteng]

You'd need some way to capture initial imperfections, with thin plates they are quite sensitive to initial imperfections and also are likely to buckle inelastically. Might be pretty heavy FEA but doesn't seem worth it for a sea can.