This paper focuses on the earthquake response of merchandise stored in steel storage racks and introduces the concept of inclined shelving as a measure for reduction of the seismically induced life safety hazards due to falling rack contents. The concept of inclined shelves refers to back-to-back or back-to-wall rack configurations with their shelves slightly tilted towards the inside or towards the wall, respectively, and represents the anticipated tendency of the merchandise to move inwards, when in motion, due to the contribution of the weight component parallel to the inclined shelf. The efficacy of this concept is verified experimentally through a series of shake table tests for a single level shelving system using two sets of ground motions associated with the seismicity of Western United States and Eastern North America. The experimental fragility at the 2% in 50 years seismic hazard level is computed for the case of horizontal and slightly tilted shelves for both sets. The results clearly show that the concept of inclined shelving can provide significant reduction of the pallet shedding fragility.
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