Media posted this up as a grain bin explosion ...... Yeah , it exploded after the bin toppled & took out the power lines & lit the dust up . Bad day for the farmer at this time of year . http://www.wibc.com/news/local-news/caught-video-indiana-grain-bin-explosion Looked like a structural failure to me . Seen the yellow hopper cone advertised in some farm magazines . You buy the cone & mount an bin on top of it .
Instant flame on!
Wow! Didn't look like the bin had any structural reinforcement, just a round metal tube. Ed
Typically small bins like that have no "superstructure". Just an overgrown culvert set on end with a roof. 280 tons of corn flowing like dry sand is dangerous under the best conditions. The thing that I don't understand it why they would have 10 truck loads in a loading bin.
Thanks for the video. Will make it tough to get something put back together for harvest in a short time frame, I feel for him. Most bins I saw have troubles like this, it was generally a issue with it unloading unevenly, grain bridging up toward one side, wrinkling the sheets, then eventually side loading on over, like that. They're lucky the explosion didn't knock them over. Some bins like that are 'stiffened" with outside or inside braces, some aren't. Depends on the design and the thickness of the sidewall steel.
[QUOTE="td25c, post: 705846 Seen the yellow hopper cone advertised in some farm magazines . You buy the cone & mount an bin on top of it .[/QUOTE] Yeah , this is what I was thinking about . Looks like a conversion kit . http://www.agri-systems.com/hopper-bottoms-bolt-together-kits/#prettyphoto[group]/1/ Good points on the wall stiffeners & reinforcement guys ! On the agri-systems site it shows them up on the first 3 sheets . Couple hundred bucks in iron & hardware could save a feller a headache .
Yikes... once the bin folded it was finished, emptying it just made the load more off-center.
A family of farmers i know from MO had had an entire loadout bin come down. The frame under the bin failed catastrophically. I never got the full story, but i wouldn't be surprised if they built the structure the bin was sitting on.
That's another good point RZ ! The cat could have dropped the video camera & shut it all down . Might have avoided the worst , we will never know .