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Development of a seismic testing facility to test full scale steel storage racks.

Conference Paper · May 2016

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 DEVELOPMENT OF A SEISMIC TESTING FACILITY TO
TEST FULL SCALE STEEL STORAGE RACKS

Tanim Ahmed, Mahmoud Shaheen, Kim J.R. Rasmussen and Hao Zhang

School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Abstract: This paper describes the design and commissioning of an experimental facility for
testing heavily loaded steel storage racks under seismic excitation. A one-degree-of-freedom
rig was designed to test drive-in racks with 4.4m × 4.4m footprint, up to 5m in height and pal-
let loads of up to 54 tons. Particular attention was paid to instrumenting the frames with ac-
celerometers and laser or LVDT displacement transducers to capture the 3D cross- and down-
aisle deformations and accelerations resulting from the eccentric bracing of the frames. The
paper describes the concepts adopted for the design and construction of the test facility as well
as the rationale for the instrumentation.

1. Introduction
Steel storage racks are important structures that carry loads much higher than their self-weight
and stored goods are by large the main source of load resisted by the frame. For space utiliza-
tion and providing access to stored goods, their use has increased steadily with a significant
amount in areas with public access. Traditionally their design guidelines have been developed
primarily focusing on gravity loads [1-3]. Very little information is available on the seismic
response of storage racks [4-7].
Experimental verification of the performance of a structure under seismic events can be
carried out by shake table tests or pushover tests. A shake table test captures the effects of a
varied range of loading frequencies, effects of strain rate and the complete three dimensional
response of the structure. To obtain a proper understanding of the seismic response of drive-in
racks, full scale seismic tests on a commercial rack sub-assembly have been carried out. This
paper describes the development of the seismic testing facility for testing the racks in both
down-aisle and cross-aisle directions.
The International Colloquium on Stability and Ductility of Steel Structures, Timisoara, Romania

2. Design considerations
A fully loaded, full scale drive-in rack subassembly was to be tested in both down-aisle and
cross-aisle directions. It needed to carry a maximum pallet load of 54 tons. In the first stage
the rack would be tested in the down-aisle direction. Subsequently, the rack would be disman-
tled and rotated 90 degrees for testing in the cross-aisle direction.
The test rig had four major components: i) Hydraulic Jack, ii) Roller Support Beams, iii)
Skates/Rollers and iv) RHS Load Transfer Frame. The test set-up was specifically designed to
be operated on a standard concrete slab without the need for connection to a strong floor. Four
I-beams (150 UC-37.2) were anchored to the concrete floor using heavy duty anchor bolts. A
rectangular 4×4 grid frame made of RHS members with rollers underneath, was mounted on
these I-beams, enabling the RHS-frame to move forwards and backwards along the beams. A
hydraulic jack anchored to a 150 mm concrete slab was attached to one end of the rectangular
frame, which could move the RHS-frame according to any given earthquake signal. A sche-
matic diagram of the test rig components is shown in Fig. 1.
A finite element (FE) model of the rack subassembly was created using Abaqus. Linear
transient dynamic analyses were carried out to obtain the base shears developed due to appli-
cation of a suite of preselected earthquake records, including El Centro-180, Duzce-180 and
Tabas-LN earthquake signals. Table 1 shows the computed base shears and forces for differ-
ent spine bracing configurations under El Centro-180 loading. The maximum base shear of
350 kN was encountered for the Tabas-LN earthquake in the cross-aisle direction. The base
shear was also calculated using the Equivalent Static Method (ESM) of NZS 1170.5.2004 [8]
for different site conditions. The maximum base shear from ESM was 220 kN for the cross-
aisle direction, considering a 60% effective load of the total pallet weight.

Table 1: Base Shear

Spine Bracing Displacement (DI loading, mm) Base Shear (kN) Base Shear (kN)
Configuration Down-aisle Cross-aisle (Down-aisle Loading) (Cross-aisle Loading)
1 No Bracing 330 0 130 200
2 Mid Bay 130 15 135 205
3 Side Bay 132 17 138 205

Drive-in rack

RHS frame

150 mm concrete slab

Jack anchor

Hydraulic jack Skates Roller support beams

Down-aisle instrument frame

Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of test set-up

 Tanim Ahmed, Mahmoud Shaheen, Kim J. R. Rasmussen and Hao Zhang

Other information including the reaction forces at the upright bases and member forces devel-
oped in the test rig were used to design the rig components. Initially, dynamic analyses of an
FE model of the rack loaded with 54 ton pallet load were performed. The resulting reaction
forces extracted from the model were used for carrying out a static analysis on a model con-
taining only the test rig to determine the member forces. Later, a combined model with the
rack attached to the rig was also developed.

3. Components of the test rig

3.1 Hydraulic jack and jack anchor

The hydraulic jack, servo valve and accumulators were designed in cooperation with CMA
Electro Hydraulic Engineers. Considering the frequency components of the selected suite of
earthquakes and the maximum base shear obtained from the FE analysis, a 600 kN dynamic
load rated jack was designed. To run the jack to its full capacity without any pressure fluctua-
tion in the oil supply, accumulators were installed for both supply and return line. Some of the
features of the jack are:
• Solenoid controlled main flow isolation valve to the servo actuator. This is a large
valve to allow the peak flows up to 1000 l/min anticipated at 500mm/sec piston speed.
• Integrated Digital Position feedback transducer inside the cylinder.
• Integrated servo valve(s), suited for both dynamic and static motion control.
• 900 kN load cell attachment.
Because of the layer of roller beams and skates the test rig level was elevated from the ground
by about 315 mm. The jack was placed at the same elevation using vertically standing 70 mm
plates as shown in Fig. 2. In the jack-anchor design, both the direct shear force and the mo-
ment produced as a result of the elevated jack were taken into consideration. Four vertical
plates were welded to a large base plate which was anchored to the concrete slab of the struc-
tures laboratory. The vertical plates had threaded holes for bolts to connect the jack through
its side-lug holes. On each vertical plate a key-way slot was also cut to accommodate the side
lugs of the jack. Although the bolts were sufficient to hold the jack to the anchor frame, the
key-way slots were added to transfer the shear load.

Side Lugs
70mm Vertical
Plate

Anchor Bolt
Locations

(a) (b)
Fig. 2: a) FE model of jack anchor b) The actual jack and its attachments

An FE model (Fig. 2a) was developed to determine the forces on the anchor bolts and also to
determine their best possible locations. Based on the FE analysis, a 32mm plate was used for
the base plate. For anchoring the jack to the concrete floor, M16 SpaTec Plus safety anchors
were used for their high capacity in shear and tension. The anchor bolts were placed in 4
rows, each row containing 5 bolts. Fig. 2b shows the constructed jack and support base.
The International Colloquium on Stability and Ductility of Steel Structures, Timisoara, Romania

3.2 Roller support beams

Below the test frame, the roller beams are connected directly to the concrete slab. The whole
rack is sitting on a set of rollers and moves along the laid beams. Four 6m long I-beams were
laid parallel to each other and fastened to the ground using a total of 96 M16 Spatec safety
anchors. The anchor bolts were fitted through 12mm rectangular connector plates welded to
the bottom flanges of the beams and screwed into anchors inserted into the concrete floor of
the laboratory. The uprights at the back of the rack, where spine bracing is to be located for
the down-aisle testing, were expected to experience the maximum uplift. A finite element
model was created to determine the stresses developed at different locations of the beam for
the applied loads. The loading locations were varied to calculate the maximum reaction forces
on the anchoring positions and also to find the maximum stresses in the I-beams. Based on the
FE analysis, the I-beam below the uprights featuring spine bracing were designed with extra
anchor bolts to withstand an uplift force of 120 kN. The other 3 I-beams were designed for
uplift forces of 60 KN.

3.3 Skates

One of the major components of the test rig was the rollers, or skates, running on the I-beams.
From the FE simulations it was found that the uprights would face uplift, especially those
connected to spine bracing. The maximum uplift occurs when spine bracing is installed from
the top to the bottom level of the rack at the mid-bay only. For this reason, the skates under
the uprights with spine bracing were designed to transfer the maximum uplift force. The other
skates were designed for a lower uplift capacity.
15-OT type Hilman rollers with 15 tons vertical downward loading capacity were chosen
for the skates. Bearings were attached to the rollers to prevent the uplift and lateral movement.
The rollers expected to experience heavier uplift were fitted with 8 bearings (4 on each side)
to restrict the uplift, while the others had 4 bearings (2 on each side). To restrict lateral
movement, each roller was fitted with 4 guide bearings, 2 on each side. Fig. 3 shows the bear-
ing attachments on the rollers.

Skates

Bearings

Roller support beams

(150 UC 37.2)

(a) (b)
Fig. 3: Views of skates with bearings to restrain (a) uplift and (b) lateral movement

3.4 RHS frame

The dimensions of the RHS frame were governed by both the strength requirement and con-
sideration of the base plate size of the rack. 75 mm wide beams were chosen to facilitate the
bolting of the upright base plates of the rack. The frame was designed for a base shear of
600 kN using 125×75×6 RHS members. The frame had a rectangular and a triangular part, as
shown in Fig. 4(a). The rectangular part is a grid system having 4 continuous members run-
ning in the loading direction. Perpendicular segmented link members connected the continu-
 Tanim Ahmed, Mahmoud Shaheen, Kim J. R. Rasmussen and Hao Zhang

ous members at three equal intervals. All the members in the rectangular part were welded to
each other. The end of the rectangular part closer to the jack had extra cross bracings to en-
sure uniform displacement across the width of the platform. To avoid interference with the
base plate connection of the uprights, the cross-bracings could not go all the way to corners.
Additional smaller members perpendicular to the diagonal bracings were placed at the corner
locations.
A triangular frame made of same RHS sections was connected to the rectangular part using
bolted connections, to transfer the load from the hydraulic jack. The connection between the
jack and the triangular frame included a spherical alignment coupler to allow for +/-3 mm and
+/-3 degrees misalignment. Fig. 4b shows photos of different parts of the rig during construc-
tion, including the triangular frame, a skate on a roller beam, jack to frame connection and a
partial view of the 4×4 grid frame (clock-wise, starting from top-left).
1475 1475 1475

125×75×6 1475
RHS
1475

Upright
connection
plate
1475

(a) (b)
Fig. 4: a) Test rig drawing for construction, b) different components of the rig

4. Instrumentation
To capture the response in both the loading direction and its perpendicular direction, instru-
ments were placed on both sides of the rack. Two instrument frames, perpendicular to each
other, were built on the ground, detached from the moving rig. To record the down-aisle
movement, eight transducers (LVDT) with 1400 mm measuring range were placed at the top
and mid-level of the rack. Two LVDTs of 600 mm range were used at the base level to meas-
ure the down-aisle displacement of the rig. In a similar arrangement, eight laser displacement
sensors with a measuring range of 200 mm were used for the cross-aisle response measure-
ment at the top- and mid-levels, and two 20 mm range sensors were placed at the base level.
The laser sensors were attached directly to the rack. The movement of the rack in the cross-
aisle direction was picked up by the laser beams reflected from the flat surface of a horizontal
RHS member on the cross-aisle instrument frame. Fig. 5 shows the two instrument frames.
Strain gauges were placed on uprights, spine and plan braces to monitor internal forces de-
veloped during the seismic loading. On the uprights, strain gauges were placed on the neutral
axis on both sides of the symmetric axis. They were calibrated for both tension and compres-
sion by separate stub column tests and tension tests on separate upright specimens.
Accelerometers were placed on the rack, pallet and concrete blocks on three rail beam levels
to observe the possible effect of sliding motion of the pallets and goods (concrete blocks).
The International Colloquium on Stability and Ductility of Steel Structures, Timisoara, Romania

(a) (b)
Fig. 5: (a) Transducer frame (down-aisle measurements), (b) laser sensor frame
(cross-aisle measurements)

5. Rig performance and seismic tests

The jack performance and rig commissioning process included a varied range of tests starting
with the unhooked jack being tested with different simple control signals, including sinusoidal
and saw tooth signals. Subsequently, to ensure that the jack can follow complex actual ground
motion signals, the system was tested with the scaled suite of earthquakes to be used in the
seismic tests. The scaling of the earthquake signals were carried out following the seismic de-
sign code of New Zealand [8], considering the zone coefficient for Wellington and structural
natural period obtained from the FE frequency analysis. To keep consistency and avoid com-
plications among different tests, the scaling of signals were kept to the one obtained in this
stage. Only multiplying factors, (MF=0.1, 0.2 etc.) were used to increase or decrease the sig-
nal strength. Different loading scenarios were investigated, where the jack was attached to the
rig and gradually concrete blocks were added to the RHS frame, finally reaching a total of
50.5 tons.
To allow for the entry of fork lift trucks, drive-in racks cannot have any bracing at the
front. Only the back is braced with spine braces. Tests were carried out to understand the ef-
fects of spine bracing configuration on the three-dimensional behaviour of the drive-in racks.
Seven different spine bracing configurations were tested. As part of the rack tests, the dynam-
ic properties of the racks were obtained from free vibration tests, using step functions of var-
ied speed and base displacements, explained in more details in [9]. For seismic tests, first, the
empty racks were tested under three different earthquake loads including the El Centro-180,
Duzce-180 and Tabas-LN. The empty rack was tested with a maximum of 100% (MF=1.0) of
the scaled suite of the selected earthquakes. The fully loaded rack was tested under the same
suite of earthquakes but with a maximum of 30% (MF=0.3) of the scaled earthquakes. In all
these cases the performance of the rig was monitored using different instrumentation. The two
600 mm LVDTs placed at the two outer corners of the rig were used to measure the rack dis-
placement and to check for any differential movement between the two points. The rig per-
formance was found to be consistent in all phases of the tests, both in terms of acceleration
and displacement. For the fully loaded rack with 30% of El Centro loading, the control signal
had peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.10g and the measured PGA was found to be 0.11g.
 Tanim Ahmed, Mahmoud Shaheen, Kim J. R. Rasmussen and Hao Zhang

Fig. 6 shows a comparison of the control signal and the output displacement signal recorded
from the ground level LVDTs during a fully loaded test.
60
Displacement (mm)

40 El Centro 30%_Control Signal

20 Measured Rig Displacement

0
-20
-40
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Time (sec)
Fig. 6: Control signal and measured displacement comparison

To monitor the torsional behaviour of the rack, the mid- and top-level were instrumented with
four transducers each. Fig. 7 shows the displacement response at four locations on the top lev-
el of the rack for 30% of the scaled El Centro loading. The displacement gradually reduces
from the front to the back because of the spine bracing. Table 2 shows the variation of re-
sponses including the base shear, the maximum top displacement and maximum upright forc-
es for the seven spine bracing configuration tested using 20% of the scaled El Centro loading,
as reported in [9].
60 Front
Top Displacement (mm)

Mid-Front
40 Mid-Back
20 Back

0
-20
-40
-60
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Time (second)
Fig. 7: Down-aisle displacement response at different locations on top level of the rack for El Centro
30% loading
Table 2: Test Results for Fully Loaded Rack (El Centro 20%)
Bracing Period of Base Shear Max Top Displacement Max Seismic Axial Force
Configuration Structure (kN) (DI) (mm) on Upright (kN)
Front Back Compression Tension
Config-1 0.68 45 32 7 35 7.2
Config-2 0.81 40 41 20 29 7.2
Config-3 1.04 34 39 27 21 3.8
Config-4 1.28 29 36 30 11 2.1
Config-5 0.81 40 38 24 30 9.0
Config-6 0.73 46 32 14 40 5.9
Config-7 0.91 39 35 25 39 7.0

6. Conclusions
A shake table was designed to test drive-in steel storage racks in both down-aisle and cross-
aisle directions. The methodology and principles behind the design of the shake table has been
 The International Colloquium on Stability and Ductility of Steel Structures, Timisoara, Romania

presented along with description of the major components of the rig and the instrument
frames.
Tests in the down-aisle direction have been successfully carried out with sample results
presented in this paper. The rig performed consistently with different levels of loading condi-
tions including the empty rack and loaded rack with varying levels of earthquake signals.
The instruments performed as intended, specially, the LVDTs and laser sensors were able
to successfully capture the displacements at different locations of the rack, and the strain
gauges provided reliable recording for determining axial forces in the uprights. Research is
underway to test the rack in the cross-aisle direction.

Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Australian Research Council under Linkage Project Grant
LP120100458. This support is gratefully acknowledged.

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