What is the force on the trailer wall

[Pratap Lingam]

Hello All,

I am a semi trailer manufacturer who just started building specialty trailers for various industries. Recently I have been asked to develop a trailer to carry peanuts from the farms and deliver them to ware house. To design the trailer light enough, i have decided to go with Composite panel, but manufacturer wants to know the force of the Unshelled peanuts, so they can suggest the right material for us. I have never done this, so I need help from bright minds like you. Here are the details.

Trailer storage area for peanuts is: 44' L x 102" W x 9' 6" H
Unshelled Peanut weight per cubic feet is: 17.6 lb (approximate)

Unshelled Peanuts are equally distributed inside the trailer. So the force will be downward and sideways. I need to know the force on the sideways, so the right composite panel is used and supported in right places.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Pratap

 

[Nidum]

http://www.inti.gob.ar/cirsoc/pdf/silos/SolidsNotes10HopperDesign.pdf- Section 10.10

 

[BvU]

That's pretty sophisticated ! It will be quite a job to establish the proper values for all the variables in the Janssen equation 10-9. (This may help ?)
However, from figure 10-7 you can see that the assumption that the material behaves as a liquid ("hydrostatic") at least gives an upper limit for the forces on the walls (fig 4-6 http://udel.edu/~inamdar/EGTE215/Hydrostatics.pdf ).

 

[Nidum]

However, from figure 10-7 you can see that the assumption that the material behaves as a liquid ("hydrostatic") at least gives an upper limit for the forces on the walls (fig 4-6 http://udel.edu/~inamdar/EGTE215/Hydrostatics.pdf ).

Yes - and for a trailer wall less than 10 ft high it is probably accurate enough in practice .

Note that many dry granular materials are very abrasive and you will sometimes see trailers with throw away polythene liners as protection .