A Calculating And Drafting Programme For Ground-supported Silos Based On AutoCAD Further Development

A ground-supported silo is a kind of booming unique structure, which can be widely used in electricity, coal, chemical engineering, metallurgy and other fields. As a kind of thin shell structure, ground-supported silos have complex mechanic behaviour and failure criteria under loads, as a result, a number of factors should be considered when such a silo is designed. Nowadays, The Code for Design of Grain Steel Silos has been published, which can serve as the standard of calculating steel silos. However, it involves quite a large number of formula, and the construction plans have to be drawn manually, which brings structural engineers a rather heavy burden.This thesis developed a programme for ground-supported silos’calculating and drafting with the tool of VisualLISP on the platform of AutoCAD, which complies with the theories in The Code for Design of Grain Steel Silos and other standards about silos home and abroad. With this programme, all users have to do is to input the parameters for designing steel silos in the provided dialogs, and then the programme will calculate, check and draft, which greatly simplifies the design procedure, reduces designers’repetitive labour and exerts computers’precision and humans’ingenuity to a large extent.This programme consists of four modules:the module of inputting information, the module of calculating loads, the module of checking and outputting and the module of drafting. The module of inputting information set steel silos’design diameter as variables, and assign them according to what users have inputted. The module of calculating loads substitutes these variables in the formula in the codes and calculates a variety of loads, and then combines these loads. The module of checking and outputting is used for strength and stability checkings and calculation text outputting. The module of drafting first reads the geometrical date users have inputted, and then carries out parameterised drafting.This programme has friendly user interface, brief operation and high precision when calculating and drafting about ground-supported steel silos, so it is a practical auxiliary tool for structural engineers.