DESRACK objective

A sustainable strategy to reduce the seismic vulnerability of steel storage pallet racks is to increase the life cycle and the lifetime of the existing stock of racks. This will aid in reducing the economic and environmental impact of new constructions but also avoiding downtime in logistics, which may cause high direct and indirect economic loss (e.g. cost of dismantling and replacement or downtime/business interruption along with issues for workers). The DESRACK project responds to this need by delivering an innovative seismic dissipative device that will be used to enhance the seismic performance of existing racks.

The development of this innovative seismic dissipative device will cover these key aspects:

• Engineering impact: the new device will be proposed in the market with the aim to improve the seismic behavior of racks, bringing additional competitivity to the engineering state of knowledge of the racks seismic response.

• Reduction of material waste: by applying the proposed device to existing racks it will be possible to avoid the dismantling of the frames that do not satisfy seismic response standards.

• Protection of stored goods: by using the proposed devices, the stored goods on the racks will be safe. The risk of overturning is expected to become close to zero.

More information on the DESRACK project can be found here.

Team

DESRACK is composed by professors, researchers, and practitioners from four Italian universities, one research center, and one industrial partner. 

More information on the DESRACK participants can be found here.