The pallet program has been produced to design regular pallet racks and shelving systems according to the FEM code. The program determines the buckling load of the equivalent free sway structure and using stability functions calculates the axial and shear forces and the bending moments within the structure. The program incorporates routines to deal with pattern loading. This paper describes the developments made to the program to include the effects of splices in columns, accidental damage and an automatic mode of operation to determine all combinations of upright and beam satisfying a given payload. One result of running the program is the observation that when designing pallet racks the engineer must be particularly careful in the position of splices as small variations in position, especially near to beam-column intersections, can lead to large variations in performance. Finally the paper will discuss the accuracy of the program and its future developments.
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