New pallet racking guide published

BRANZ recently published a pallet racking design guide (Seismic Design of High Level Storage Racking Systems with Public Access) that provides authoritative and timely information to help designers, territorial authorities and building owners assess the performance of pallet racking systems.

The Department, together with the Earthquake Commission and Building Research, has supported BRANZ in this work, as it addresses public and industry concerns about the safety of high-level storage racking systems.

The design guide covers pallet racking systems built using cold-rolled steel sections and commonly found in supermarkets and home handyman stores. These structures resist earthquakes by moment frame action in the down-aisle direction and by diagonally braced frames in the cross-aisle direction.

Safety of pallet racking systems is vital because poorly designed racking can collapse, overturn or shed its contents during an earthquake, causing injury or death to building tenants and the public.

The design guide includes design examples and details of verification testing, and makes recommendations for store operators.

The design guide is available in hard copy from BRANZ Ltd, or can be downloaded from the Building Research website