Behavior of Industrial Steel Rack Connections

• Failure of tabs, tearing of column and yielding of the connector were observed.
• Modeling of tabs in FE analysis replicated original experimental conditions.
• M-θ curves significantly depends on the parameters analyzed in parametric study.

Beam-to-column connections (BCCs) used in steel pallet racks (SPRs) play a significant role to maintain the stability of rack structures in the down-aisle direction. The variety in the geometry of commercially available beam end connectors hampers the development of a generalized analytic design approach for SPR BCCs. The experimental prediction of flexibility in SPR BCCs is prohibitively expensive and difficult for all types of commercially available beam end connectors. A suitable solution to derive a particular uniform M–θ relationship for each connection type in terms of geometric parameters may be achieved through finite element (FE) modeling. This study first presents a comprehensive description of the experimental investigations that were performed and used as the calibration bases for the numerical study that constituted its main contribution. A three dimensioned (3D) non-linear finite element (FE) model was developed and calibrated against the experimental results. The FE model took into account material nonlinearities, geometrical properties and large displacements. Comparisons between numerical and experimental data for observed failure modes and M-θ relationship showed close agreement. The validated FE model was further extended to perform parametric analysis to identify the effects of various parameters which may affect the overall performance of the connection.