Flexural Behavior of Steel Storage Rack Base-Plate Upright Connections with Concentric Anchor Bolts

Steel storage racks are slender structures whose overall behavior and the capacity depend largely on the flexural behavior of the base-plate to upright connections and on the behavior of beam-to-column connections. The base-plate upright connection assembly details, anchor bolt position in particular, associated with the high-rise steel storage racks differ from those of normal height steel storage racks. Since flexural behavior of high-rise rack base connection is hitherto unavailable, this investigation experimentally establishes the flexural behavior of base-plate upright connections of high-rise steel storage racks. This investigation used an enhanced test setup and considered nine groups of three identical tests to investigate the influence of factors such as axial load, base plate thickness, anchor bolt size, bracket length, and upright thickness. The test observations show that the base-plate assembly may significantly influence the overall behavior of such connections. A rigid plate analytical model and an elastic plate analytical model for the overall rotations stiffness of base-plate upright connections with concentric anchor bolts were constructed, and were found to give better predictions of the initial stiffness of such connections. Analytical model based parametric studies highlight and quantify the interplay of components and provide a means for efficient maximization of overall rotational stiffness of concentrically anchor bolted high-rise rack base-plate upright connections.