Structural performance of steel automated rack-supported warehouses under fire

This work focusses on the fire modelling and structural thermo-mechanical assessment of Automated Rack Supported Warehouses (ARSWs), a special steel racking system that combines the benefits of steel constructions with automated handling of stored products. The study consists of two phases with the first phase being related to the development of a fire model for multi-depth ARSW structures, by adopting simplified and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models. A fire model capable of simulating vertical and horizontal fire propagation, starting from a localized fire is proposed and validated on experimental results available in literature. The second phase of the paper analyses the structural collapse mechanisms and examines the methodologies for efficient analysis to interpret collapse mechanisms. Computational modelling has been conducted through several subsequent implicit analyses carried out with SAFIR software and the results are compared with the detailed modelling using ABAQUS, which enables a combination of implicit and explicit analyses. The study shows insights into the response of ARSWs in fire and provides knowledge for the safer and reliable fire designs of such structures.