Chapter 9: Pallet Racking

摘要

Nowadays, the storage industry is huge and, in the UK alone, about 50000 tonnes of steel are used annually in the fabrication of structures whose sole purpose is to store material in a manner that makes it easily accessible (Godley; 1991). Much of this steel is in the form of cold-formed sections so that storage structures are a particularly important application of light gauge steel technology. As a consequence of this, the storage industry has often led the way with research to improve the state of the art and thus to define better design procedures for cold-formed steel members. Furthermore, the design of pallet racking is particularly demanding and offers insights into many aspects of the practical design of thin-walled structures. It is, therefore, particularly appropriate to study pallet racking as part of this series of papers. In producing this paper, a few minor simplifications have been made in order to introduce the essentials of the subject without an over-concentration on points of detail. Accordingly, this paper should be seen as offering an introduction to the subject rather than a detailed design procedure.