Structural behavior of self-supporting rack structures: a case study

The main objective of this thesis is to investigate self-supporting rack structures and develop a methodology for their analysis, pre-design and detailed design starting from a real case study. This kind of structures is becoming more and more popular nowadays, as the level of automation which characterizes it. Its efficiency needs to be as high as possible: this is achieved maximizing storage space while minimizing cost, through an extensive optimization process during design. In fact, its modular nature can be translated into huge savings even for a small reduction of material used in one axe. Following Eurocodes and European Norms, one of these structure has to be designed and built in Belgium in 2020: it is the aim of this thesis to present a comparison between two different analysis methodologies, as well as developing a methodology to design, verify and optimize the whole structure guaranteeing safety and cost-effectiveness. The design and verification process needs to be automatized as much as possible, in order to simplify the optimization of the single elements and, in general, be capable of handle this kind of project faster and faster in the future. Some details will require further analysis: it is one goal to identify here all of them and propose solutions, which can include finite element simulations and experimental tests.