European and United States approaches for steel storage pallet rack design: Part 1: Discussions and general comparisons

• Slender thin-walled components are typical of steel storage racks.
• EU and US pallet design codes are discussed, focussing the attention on key aspects.
• Effective EU and US cross-section geometric properties are comparatively considered.
• The EU and US verification design procedures for beam–columns are detailed analyzed.
• Similarities and differences of the EU and US analysis approaches are discussed.

A very common application of cold-formed thin-walled steel members regards the industrial storage systems for goods and products, such as pallet racks, which are the core of the present paper. Owing to the increasing needs associated with globalization as well as the importance of the logistics, nowadays, rack manufactures must be highly competitive in the most industrialized countries: as a consequence, it is frequently required that engineers design in accordance with standards of the country where the storage rack will be in service. Due to peculiarities associated with the requirements of each code, different values of the rack load carrying capacity are expected and their quantification should be of great interest for commercial reasons: this is an important open question for designers and manufactures that up to now is without any practical response.A two-part paper has been written to summarize the main results of a comparative study on pallet rack design provisions currently adopted in Europe and the United States. Part 1 describes the key features of both codes, discussing similarities and differences associated with the admitted design procedures with reference to the member verification procedures and to the alternative analysis approaches. Furthermore, practical comparisons related to isolated members under compression and bending are proposed to allow a direct appraisal of structural performance.The companion paper (part 2: Practical applications) reports on an exhaustive analysis with regards to the contents herein introduced and applied to the design of 216 medium-rise semi-continuous pallet racks that are unbraced in the longitudinal direction.