Drive-In Steel Storage Racks I: Stiffness Tests and 3D Load-Transfer Mechanisms
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Abstract
Steel storage racks, made of cold-formed steel, are used extensively in industry for storing goods. Two main racking systems prevail, referred to as selective racks and drive-in racks. International racking design codes deal mainly with selective racks, but limited design guidelines are available for drive-in racks. Drive-in racks require minimum floor space by storing pallets one after the other with no space between them. The forklift truck drives into the rack to store the pallets on the first-in, last-out principle. To allow forklift passage, drive-in racks can be braced only at the back (spine bracing) and at the top (plan bracing) in the down-aisle direction, resulting in a complex slender structure with poorly understood three-dimensional (3D) behavior and increased risk of collapse. Tests on drive-in rack systems to accurately capture their 3D behavior have not previously been available in the literature. This paper presents experimental results from full-scale tests conducted on a complete drive-in rack system. Experimental investigations of the load transfer and relative stiffness under various horizontal loading conditions are presented. Experiments have been performed on loaded and unloaded racks.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Murray Clarke from Dematic Pty Ltd. for his comments and for making the Dematic software RAD available. Also thanks to Dr. Lip Teh from the University of Wollongong for his comments. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Australian Research Council through Discovery Project Grant ARCDP0559983.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 138 • Issue 2 • February 2012
Pages: 135 - 147
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 31, 2010
Accepted: May 23, 2011
Published online: May 25, 2011
Published in print: Feb 1, 2012
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