The market offers many free-standing, fixed pallet racking systems from various manufacturers. The vast majority of offered racking systems feature a design where the upright frames use perforated, thin-walled, cold-formed steel profiles with cross-sectional dimensions adapted to the load being carried. The thickness of the steel strip used for their production ranges from 1.5 to 3 mm. During operation, rack uprights are exposed to accidental impacts from forklifts used for their handling or from moved palletized unit loads.
Almost every rack manufacturer includes protectors as optional equipment in their offer. The purpose of these protectors is to protect the front uprights of the rack frames from accidental impacts, as any impact on a thin-walled upright can cause permanent deformation, which can have catastrophic consequences. Protectors are purchased and used by users on a voluntary basis.
Depending on the mounting location, two types of protectors are offered:
1) Protectors mounted directly to the rack upright frames
2) Protectors mounted independently to the floor.
Protectors of this type are mounted directly to the front uprights of the rack frames. In practice, solutions with various cross-sectional shapes are encountered, with two mounting systems being common, examples of which are shown in Figs. 1, 2, and 3.
The protectors shown in Figs. 1 ÷ 2 are mounted to the webs of the profiles used for the uprights using four bolted connections (bolt + washer(s) + nut) through the existing perforation.
The protectors shown in Fig. 3 are also mounted using bolted connections to the flanges of the profiles used for the uprights, also through the existing perforation. In this case, the number of bolted connections depends on the length of the protectors. Generally, there are four or six connections.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 2/2004.