The Impact of Perforation Orientation on Buckling Behaviour of Storage Rack Uprights

Abstract

Industrial storage rack uprights are the most widely used framed structures of thin-walled cold-formed steel members which are meant for the depot of palletized goods. The sensibility of uprights towards local buckling, distortional buckling, global buckling or interaction between these buckling modes in the presence of perforations results in complex behaviour of the uprights. The sustainability of the uprights in terms of the perforations, cross-section geometry, buckling and complexity might be difficult to design through the existing analytical methods alone. The test-based design being expensive leads to the necessity of an analysis-based design approach. The limited analytical methods available in the literature focus on orthogonal perforations and there is no systematic study available in terms of perforation orientation which would imply a minimum net section. This article sheds light effect of increased perforated width due to orientation which directly influences the elastic local critical buckling load calculations. The parametric analysis using finite element software is systematically done for the simple rack section with orthogonal cross-section elements having two idealized transverse web perforations of square and rectangular shape oriented at an angle other than orthogonal angles. The pre-validated FE model is used in this study, and thus the critical elastic buckling loads are procured for various perforation orientations. The CUFSM buckling analysis is done by using the reduced thickness expression recommended in the literature and compared with the FE results. The applicability of reduced thickness equations in accounting perforations in the view of perforation orientation is compared and summarized. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.