Development and validation of Economic and Sustainable Retrofitting techniques for seismic risk mitigAtion of steel storage pallet raCKs

Claudio Bernuzzi (Principal Investigator)

Recently, steel storage racks for logistics have become progressively more important, also owing to the remarkable increment of the web marketing activities. Furthermore, their relevant role played for the society has been also recently amplified by the Covid19 Pandemic. Up to now, no attention has been paid to existing racks, i.e. to storage systems fully in-service and erected a few decades ago, for which it should be required to appraise the effective load carrying capacity in accordance with the current design provisions, by considering also the recent updating of the seismic maps. To these existing racks is addresses the DESRACK project, whose goal is to develop a sustainable strategy reducing their seismic vulnerability with an increment of their life cycle and their lifetime, reducing economic and environmental impacts. The project introduces a cost-effective seismic dissipative device that strengthens crucial connections like beam-to-column and base-plate connections.

Contribution to SDGs: 9, 11