Seismic responses and vulnerability assessment of column-bearing silos with soil-structure interaction

Many grain silos in earthquake intensity areas are at significant risk of post-seismic damage, which compromise their functionality and pose an enormous challenge to post-disaster rescue and social stability. However, the current specifications based on fixed-base foundations are not fit for the seismic design of silos in soft soil areas. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the seismic disaster prevention of siloes considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) for food security and post-disaster supply. In this research, a column-bearing silo in a soft soil area is taken as the research object. The relative displacement response, elastic-plastic development and storage lateral pressure of the structure under different ground motions are studied in detail when the state of filling storage material is empty, half-filled and fully filled. Compared with the fixed-base model, the mechanism of the ground motion response and the influence of the SSI effects on the dynamic characteristics of the column-bearing silo structure under different storage conditions are revealed. In addition, structural vulnerability analysis is carried out with the incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) method. Finally, the structural damage probability with and without SSI effects under different storage conditions is further discussed. The results demonstrate that the SSI effects have a certain damping effect on the column-bearing silo. The amount of storage material changes the failure probability of the structure. Moreover, full-silo is the most dangerous condition, indicating that the filling state of storage material affects the stiffness degradation. This study provides theoretical insight to the influence of the SSI effect on the seismic resilience of structures.