Linear buckling analysis of perforated steel storage rack columns with the Finite Strip Method

An investigation on the use of the Finite Strip Method (FSM) to calculate elastic buckling loads of perforated cold formed storage rack columns is presented. Nowadays, this calculation can be accurately performed by means of the Finite Element Method (FEM), because the effect of perforations can be explicitly considered in the analysis. However, the FSM is preferred in cold-formed steel design since it is implemented in much convenient and easy to use software. The problem with FSM is that holes cannot be easily modeled. In this paper, the concept of the reduced thickness of the perforated strip is applied to take into account their effect. A formulation is presented for the reduced thickness that has been calibrated with loads obtained in eigen-buckling FEM analyses. Its accuracy has been verified carrying out analyses on real rack columns with different end conditions.