Developing seismic design guidelines for pallet racks

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Storage rack systems are widely used for storage facilities in warehouse buildings. The proposed research deals with the design of Selective Pallet Storage Steel Racks (SPSSRs) manufactured by ARPAC. Currently, there are no proper guidelines for designing such structures in seismic regions. The proposed research will experimentally investigate the behavior of proprietary structural components of beam-to-column connections, brace-to-column connections, and baseplates-to-column connections of rack structures and the frame response in both cross-aisle and down-aisle directions and develop seismic design guidelines for SPSSRs. Snapback test, and reversed cyclic loading tests will be evaluated to determine the natural period, stiffness, load-displacement response, hysteretic damping, and behavior of various connections, which will be critical to establishing finite element models that can accurately predict the response of SPSSRs.Performance-based design is becoming a standard practice for seismic design and evaluation of structures to achieve a reliable and satisfactory level of performance. There has been little study on the seismic performance of SPSSRs in Canada. This study will examine the interaction among different components of the SPSSR systems under increased lateral loads and evaluate various damage states, failure mechanisms, and its collapse behavior. This will help determine adequate section sizes and connection details. The developed numerical models will be first validated with experimental results. Then the models will be utilized to simulate the response of SPSSRs with various configurations. Incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) will be performed as per FEMA P-695 procedure to develop force modification factors for force-based design procedure. The IDA results will be also utilized to observe the damage mechanism at various displacement levels to come up with the displacement-based design procedure. This study will provide performance-based design solutions for rack structures and their elements. The significance of this research is paramount as it directly contributes to the safety and security of Canadian rack infrastructure.