DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR COLD-FORMED BEAM-COLUMNS WITH REGULAR PERFORATIONS

Steel storage racks are lightweight structures, made of thin-walled cold-formed members, whose behavior is influenced by important local, distortional and overall buckling phenomena, frequently mutually combined. In addition, the need of an easy and rapid erection and reconfiguration as well as of a great planning flexibility, usually entails the presence of regular perforations along the length of the vertical elements (uprights). The presence of holes along these profiles strongly influences their behavior, whose prediction is of paramount importance to guarantee an efficient design and a safe rack use in service. This paper focuses on the behavior of isolated uprights subjected to axial load and bending moment, differing for the cross-section geometry and the regular perforation system. According to the European alternatives for routine design, the bending moment–axial load resisting domains (M-N) are shortly discussed and critically compared.