Recently, several papers have been presented with respect to the behavior of iron are pellets in cargo holds of are carriers. However, the property of the behavior of are pellets is so complicated that studies from various points of view are still thought to be necessary and effective to establish a practical procedure to compute the are pressure in cargo holds. In this paper, the behavior of the are pellets in a hold is experimentally studied by means of two large scaled models of hulls and holds of two different are carriers. As for the essential property of the stress-strain relations of are pellets, a series of triaxial compression tests are carried out. A rather simple equation to calculate the are pressure distribution in a hold after loading is derived using the earth pressure coefficient at rest which is determined according to the results of the triaxial compression tests. A set of nonlinear elastic springs whose characteristics are determined by the triaxial compression tests are introduced as a substitute for the are pellets to calculate the interaction between the hull and the pellets. They are applied to calculate the increase of the are pressure induced by wave loads on the side shells, where the hull is replaced by a frame structure.