ABSTRACT
The construction of the silo started in 1911 and was completed in the autumn of 1913. The silo is 77 ft by 195 ft in plan and has a capacity of 1,000,000 bushels. It comprises 65 circular bins and 48 inter-bins. The foundation was a reinforced concrete raft 2 ft thick and founded at a depth of 12 ft below the ground surface. The we,ight of the silo was 20,000 tons, which was 42.5 percent of the total weight, when it was filled. Filling the silo with grain started in September 1913, and in October when the silo contained 875,000 bushels, and the pressure on the ground was 94 percent of the design pressure, a vertical settlement of 1 ft was noticed. The structure began to tilt to the west and within twenty four hours was at an angle of 26.9° from the vertical, the west side being 24 ft below and the east side 5 ft above the original level (Szechy, 1961). The structure tilted as a monolith and there was no damage to the structure except for a few superficial cracks. Figure 12.22 shows a view of the tilted structure. The excellent quality of the reinforced concrete structure is shown by the fact that later it was underpinned and jacked up on new piers founded on rock. The
