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Those peculiar structures in cold‐formed steel: “racking & shelving”
Author(s) -
Tilburgs Kees
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
steel construction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.443
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1867-0539
pISSN - 1867-0520
DOI - 10.1002/stco.201310016
Subject(s) - cold formed steel , engineering , structural engineering , finite element method , rack , cladding (metalworking) , tonnage , flexibility (engineering) , standardization , mechanical engineering , computer science , metallurgy , materials science , geology , oceanography , statistics , mathematics , operating system
One of the applications of cold‐formed steel in which a considerable tonnage is involved is corrugated steel sheets for wall and roof cladding. Another is racking and shelving (R&S), those peculiar spatial steel structures used for economic and logistics‐effective storage of goods in warehouses. R&S has to be flexible in use and therefore adjustable. It has to be competitive by providing mass production in combination with standardized components. The use of cold‐formed steel members and components was already matter of course at the very first stage of the development of R&S products around World War 2. Flexibility in shape and material leads to cost‐effectiveness in combination with special connections to realize adjustability. Considering the non‐traditional R&S detailing, the structural Eurocodes do not provide sufficient guidance to the rack designer for quite a number of design phenomena. Thus, the steel and racking industry, organized in the European Racking Federation ERF/FEM R&S, a member of the European Federation of Materials Handling (FEM), worked out a pan‐European approach to the harmonization and standardization of R&S structural design and use. However, it took until 2008/2009 to have EN standards published, following the first FEM codes in 2000–2002. For the cold‐formed members and components typically used in R&S structures, insufficient analytical approaches are available, or they have to be validated by tests. “Design assisted by testing” is a substantial part of R&S structural engineering. With the publication of EN 15512 in March 2009 for adjustable beam pallet racking, a number of European testing laboratories were commissioned by the racking industry to conduct the obligatory testing, resulting in intensive collaboration between the R&S industry and “science”, e. g. ECCS TWG 7.5. This paper gives an impression of R&S structures, the structural engineering challenge, the present state of the art and developments as well as the research still needed.