Investigate the mystery of the last backlog of rice barrels after the storm 2020
There are an estimated 750,000 pepper silos and steel barrels in rural America, which are often left empty before being filled at the annual harvest. The modest cylinders often have thin, wavy walls that demonstrate the importance of storing and drying the seeds inside.
Some of them cellar and trash bins died on August 10, 2020, when a derecho—a long-lived, straight-forward windstorm—razed through a 750-mile stretch of the Midwest. When it happened, derecho caused more than $11 billion in damage and affected about 57 million bushels of stored grain, often not covered by insurance.
Derecho is particularly severe along the Iowa Highway 80 corridor. While conducting “structural reconnaissance” in the central eastern portion of the Hawkeye State, Christine Wittich of Nebraska U came across a unique case study: a group of five interconnected grain bins, all both are empty, of identical height and diameter. Four of the trash cans were destroyed—roofs ripped off, the walls buckling, the foundation is compromised. Others? Completely intact.
On closer inspection, Wittich and Husker’s undergraduate student Benjamin Praeuner discovered that the four destroyed structures were labeled “farm trash cans,” of the type typically sold to smaller operations. . Although similar in size and purpose, the surviving structure is instead classified as a “commercial barrel”, a type commonly marketed for larger-scale operations.
But their differences went beyond their nomenclature. Research by Wittich and Praeuner indicates that commercial crates benefit from so-called vertical stiffeners: steel channels, running all the way from roof to foundation, which redistribute loads from front to back and increases load. anti-buckling wall. Farm crates lack those stiffeners and, as derecho made it all too clear, the additional wind resistance they can provide.
While the vertical reinforcement bars are partly intended to limit costs by allowing for thinner walls and extending the life of the bins, the team’s research shows that the component could also prove the key between endurance and resistance to winds of more than 100 miles per hour.
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University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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