Steel Structure Warehouse Safety Issues Should Not Be Ignored!

Industrial warehouses refer to various buildings directly used for production or supporting production, including main workshops, auxiliary rooms, and auxiliary facility buildings. Warehouses in industries such as manufacturing, transportation, commerce, construction, scientific research, and schools should all be included. In addition to production workshops, industrial warehouses also include their subsidiary buildings. Industrial warehouses can be categorized based on their structure: all-steel structure, mixed-steel structure, and brick-steel reinforced structure. Today, we will discuss the potential risks in steel structure warehouses and share information about inspection and assessment, inviting everyone to engage in further discussion.

1. What is a Steel Structure Warehouse?

A steel structure warehouse primarily refers to a warehouse where the main load-bearing components are made of steel, including steel columns, steel beams, steel foundations, steel trusses, and steel roofing. It’s worth noting that the walls of a steel structure warehouse can also be made with brick walls. This system offers several advantages such as lightweight, easy installation, short construction periods, good seismic performance, and minimal environmental pollution. Compared to reinforced concrete structures, steel structures have unique advantages in terms of "high, large, and light" (lightweight, high strength, and large span), making them one of the mainstream forms of warehouse construction.

The construction of a steel structure warehouse consists of four main components:

Foundation Embedded Parts: Typically buried underground, these parts mainly serve to fix the steel beams and stabilize the main structure of the warehouse.

Steel Columns and Beams: These are the primary load-bearing components of the warehouse, responsible for carrying the vertical loads of the entire steel structure, including external and crane loads, ensuring the structural stability and resistance to longitudinal pressures.

Walls and Roofs: These components mainly carry the lateral loads from the environment. The walls and roof provide horizontal pulling forces and connect the structure into a spatial whole, offering the necessary longitudinal stiffness, integrity, and stability.

Steel Roof: It primarily bears the longitudinal loads from external factors. Besides providing shelter, its main role is to carry and transfer horizontal loads, ensuring the spatial integrity of the structure.

Understanding the structural composition is key to designing, building, maintaining, renovating, and inspecting the warehouse, allowing for informed and rational decisions.

2. Analysis of Safety Hazards in Steel Structure Warehouses

Steel structure warehouses, due to historical reasons (lack of formal design, construction, and supervision) or due to later non-compliance in use, maintenance, and renovation, can pose significant structural safety risks. These risks can be broadly categorized into structural instability, component strength issues, and foundation stability problems.

A. Structural Instability

Structural stability can be divided into two aspects: overall structural stability and individual component stability.

Overall Stability: This depends on the supporting system of the structure, such as the inter-column supports for steel columns and horizontal supports for trusses. The supporting system must reliably transmit horizontal loads (e.g., wind, earthquake, crane loads).

Component Stability: This relies on the stiffness of individual components to ensure that elements (such as rods or plates) do not buckle under load. Not all components lose load-bearing capacity immediately after buckling, which is why regular inspections can help detect developing instability and prevent larger losses.

B. Component Strength Issues

This refers to whether the maximum stress induced by loads exceeds the material's ultimate strength. The ultimate strength depends on the material characteristics: for brittle materials like concrete, it is the maximum strength, while for steel, it is the yield point. If the component strength is insufficient, it affects the structure's load-bearing capacity and its seismic resistance.

C. Foundation Stability

The foundation's stability is crucial for ensuring the strength and deformation requirements are met. If the foundation is unstable, it can lead to uneven settlement or excessive deformation, compromising the entire structure’s stability and resistance to seismic forces.

3. Inspection and Assessment of Steel Structure Warehouses

A. When is Steel Structure Warehouse Inspection Needed?

Inspection is required when certain conditions arise, as specified in the "Industrial Building Reliability Assessment Standards," "Shanghai Engineering Construction Code for Steel Structure Testing and Assessment," and "Hunan Province Building Steel Structure Testing and Reliability Assessment Code."

B. Specific Contents of Steel Structure Warehouse Inspection

Blueprint Verification: Inspect the building’s main structural system and layout according to the provided drawings. This includes checking for quality defects in structural components and verifying the distribution of structural elements on-site.

Structural Condition Inspection: On-site inspections include checking for defects, material hardness, connections, fireproof coating thickness, corrosion protection coating thickness, dimensional deviations, component deformations, and the condition of the foundation.

Assessment Analysis: Based on on-site data, perform an analysis of the building’s load-bearing capacity and assess the safety levels of structural components, considering current standards and regulations.

Load Calculation: Conduct seismic checks and load-bearing capacity evaluations based on on-site data, evaluating the building’s ability to withstand future use.

Conclusion and Recommendations: Based on national standards, analyze the safety and seismic integrity of the steel structure, providing conclusions and suggestions for further action.

4. Conclusion

Production safety is paramount, with no room for negligence or risk-taking. Warehouse safety is the foundation of safe production. Proactively addressing potential hazards and ensuring disaster prevention is crucial to the safe development of enterprises and contributes to the stable development of regional economies.