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Fatigue study to guarantee safety in warehouse racking

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Jari Leenman

Design Engineer Mechanical – Velsen

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Dexion manufactures and supplies industrial warehouse equipment and racking. The racks are expertly designed and developed to increase warehouse storage capacity. One of the solutions is an automated system that uses rails. Travelling along these rails, a shuttle navigates the aisles, automatically transporting pallets to the right position in the warehouse. Importantly, safety must be maintained at all times. To ensure that no metal fatigue occurs in the steel, Dexion called on Vicoma’s expertise to conduct fatigue studies.

About the project

In this project, Vicoma conducted a fatigue study for a connecting rail between the warehouse racks, known as the C rail. This rail is subject to a high number of load cycles. It is therefore important to calculate when and under what conditions fatigue may occur. For example, does attaching the rail to the racks with two or four bolts affect service life? How many stress cycles can the rail withstand before fatigue occurs? And how does the weight and location of the shuttle affect the rail? A fatigue study provides insight into repetitive loads on a structure.

Role of Vicoma

Dexion provided Vicoma with several parameters such as rail thickness, material type, weight, etc. With this data, Vicoma conducted a fatigue study in accordance with NEN-EN 13001-3-1. For this purpose, the rails were modelled in CAD software, enabling Vicoma to perform an FEM calculation to determine the service life. The study indicates how many load cycles are permissible before the rail needs to be replaced.

Result

Based on specialist calculation knowledge and knowledge about fatigue of steel structures, Vicoma prepared a report which determined the permissible load cycles for the C rail, including connection. This report enables the manufacturer of industrial warehouse equipment to draw up a maintenance plan for the C rails so that they can be replaced before fatigue occurs.
In addition, the report provides insights into fastening methods in relation to fatigue of steel structures.

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