EU and US design approaches for steel storage pallet racks with mono-symmetric cross-section uprights

Design, fabrication and erection of industrial steel storage rack systems can nowadays take place at different locations, potentially separated by thousands of kilometers. Consequently, manufacturing engineers need to understand the main code provisions adopted in the country where the rack will be in-service. Frequently, design is carried out in accordance with the European (EU) or United States (US) rack codes, which are the most commonly adopted standards for industrial storage systems. As appraisal of the key differences on structural performance associated with the different code provisions in term of storage performance, a previous study of the Authors was focused on storage pallet racks comprised of bi-symmetric cross-section uprights (vertical members). Now, attention is paid to racks with mono-symmetric uprights, typically influenced by relevant warping effects, which are traditionally neglected by rack provisions and, as a consequence, by manufacturing engineers. The design approaches already considered and compared for bi-symmetric uprights now appear to be inadequate and have been necessarily improved, as suggested by the Authors, including at least the contribution due to the bimoment acting along mono-symmetric uprights. Research outcomes, which are discussed in the paper, are related to a parametric analysis on several racks differing for configurations, geometry of components and degree of rotational stiffness of joints. The associated results regarding the four EU and two US considered alternatives are presented and compared directly to each other to allow for a concrete appraisal of the most relevant differences between the admitted design approaches. In order to highlight the importance of warping effects, which can be evaluated only by means of refined finite element (FE) analysis software, design has been undertaken using also the more traditional FE beam formulation implemented in the commercial analysis packages most frequently used in manufacturing offices. Finally, Appendix A presents a complete design example to be used as benchmark, where all the discussed design options are applied and compared to each other.