Group Asset Strategy & Reliability: Structural

Integrity: Silo design evaluation – reducing

risks of failure at our Coal BU

Postado por Kwaku Acheampong 23/10/2015

After the collapse of the Eskom Majuba power station silo, the Coal South Africa initiated a project
to ensure that it was not exposed to similar asset integrity risks from its 31 concrete silos across
the South African operations. Pieter Van Rooyen, Principal Civil Engineer at Coal, was tasked with
leading the review.  Concurrently Kurt Waelbers from T&S AS&R had engaged with the Coal BU
with concerns as to the appropriateness of design criteria used in some silo designs. 

By way of background, bulk material silo design was not well understood in the early twentieth
century, and worldwide engineers used the earth pressure theory as developed by Rankine
(1857), a Scottish physicist and engineer. After extensive failures of silos, the Rankine design
criteria were reviewed in the 1960’s and found to be flawed. Consequently new design criteria
for silo design were developed.  Anglo American utilised the Rankine design criteria for a number
of years, at least until the late 80’s. However, the field of silo design is full of misunderstandings
and misinterpretations, and many of these continue and are repeated today. As a result, Anglo
American has silos which were designed using incorrect silo design criteria with a resultant
elevated risk of failure.

Kurt and Pieter commenced a joint silo design evaluation program for the Coal BU to identify risks and to put
mitigation plans in place. The fleet of Coal BU concrete silos was prioritised based on age, known condition
and business risk. Starting at the Coal South Africa Greenside site, it was found that 6 out of the 8 silos on
Greenside required strengthening. Given that these initial investigations have identified a large number of silos
at risk, T&S AS&R are proposing that the program is rolled out across all Business Units with the intention of
completing the investigations by end 2016.

The investigation process is not intrusive and is quick. It involves the following:
• Determining the silo geometry (wall thickness, height and diameter).
• Calculate the horizontal pressure.
• Compare the required wall thickness with the wall thickness on site. This will either be smaller than
the wall thickness on site or twice as thick. Resulting in a quick and objective assessment.

The mitigation repairs are also simple and low cost involving:
• For steel silos, add steel stiffeners at the bottom part of the silo.
• For concrete silos, add external reinforcing at the bottom part of the silo.

Given the consequence of a silo failure this program with the proposed repairs is believed to be essential to
ensure the integrity of our assets.

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Group Asset Strategy & Reliability: Structural Integrity: Silo design evaluation – reducing risks of failure at our
Coal BU

In the images above we see a suspect silo on the left and proposed repair solution on the right.

Contacts:
• Kurt Waelbers email: kurt.waelbers@angloamerican.com
• Pieter van Rooyen - email:  pieter.h.vanrooyen@angloamerican.com
144 Visualizações Tags: structural

Venessa Van Deventer

13/11/2015 11:03
The retrieval of the drawings from the central archives was an important factor to assist with the assessment of
the silos with respect to reviewing of the original design in relation with the current criteria. It had a cost savings
element for respective mines to carry out a scan of the silos as the following would have to be carried out:
• Arrangement and hiring of a crane/cherry picker to scan the silo walls internally and externally.
• Cost of the scanning itself
• Logistics to arrange for the above activities to take place on the mine during shutdown periods or
during operational times.

The system can be re-evaluated as from our recent experience, we have encountered the mine description
of the relevant structures somehow in certain instances differ from the description of the drawings which have
resulted in extensive time spent on retrieving the drawings.
Some more tips to consider in the future include:
• Ensuring clear attributes about the file/content are captured to make file searches more effective, for
example using the inconsistent silo names we then used attributes like the silo size and location.
• Provide quality scans with a resolution of at least 200-300 DPI
• Scan in grey-scale rather than just black

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Group Asset Strategy & Reliability: Structural Integrity: Silo design evaluation – reducing risks of failure at our
Coal BU

• Keep a detailed record register to handover with complete sets of documents and/or drawings, per
project/job, to the Projects Offices to ensure it is retained. (If the work is not done using ProjectWise
already)

Another suggestion was made to have a list of structures which each mine has with the corresponding names
given, to match or link with the respective drawing titles in the archives.

Kurt Waelbers em resposta a Caius Priscu on page 3

30/10/2015 09:53
Hi Caius,

In this case we do not need the concrete thickness - we are only interested in reinforcing.
If you do however have a need to measure concrete thickness - Werner Combrinck (Ex Field Services and now
with AS&R) has a scanner but it is too large to be hand-held.

Thx, Kurt.

Caius Priscu
23/10/2015 15:54
Thanks for this post, Kwaku.

Great work Pieter Van Rooyen and Kurt Waelbers , really needed, great initiative from Coal South Africa .

A few quick questions for the specialists: - how do you measure actual concrete thickness (hand held scanner/
ultrasonic /microwaves??) and what degree of accuracy is acceptable for you at this stage of the investigation/
review?

Second, any concerns about the foundation instability? Is this to be checked another time / later on ? (the
geotech in me needs to ask this question J ).

Cheers,

Caius