This research was carried out with purpose of developing a method to estimate the ore load acting on ship structures. The Coulomb's theory has been used to calculate the soil pressure, but that theory dose not adequate for the present purpose. In this research, it is assumed that a body of ore-pellets can be treated as a continuous medium having nonlinear stress strain relation, the material coefficients of such a medium were determined from the results of compaction tests, triaxial tests and friction tests. Using a cylindrical test tank, the cariblations for the soil pressure cells used in the present research were performed, then the ore pressure distribution in the tank, the total pressure acting on the bottom of tank and the effects of the cylinder wall on the ore pressure were examined. The behaviours of the ore in the tank were calculated by the finite element method with the material coefficients obtained from the above basic tests. The calculated results roughly conformed to the experimental results.