IMPERFECTION SENSITIVITY OF STRUCTURES WITH SEMIRIGID JOINTS

In the storage and materials handling industry, semi-rigid joint behav iour has been used for many years when evaluating the load carrying ca pability of beams, and the stability of unbraced frameworks ks. Howeve r, less research work has been conducted on the overall frame behaviou r of semi-rigid unbraced frameworks. The structural stability action i s akin to that of a shell in so far as it exhibits an unstable point o f bifurcation and consequent peak loan behaviour. The role of imperfec tions is critical to the magnitude of the peak lend and this paper sho ws that the load reduction for unbraced pallet rack frames is proporti onal to the square root of the initial imperfection inherent in the st ructure. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.