Design and Structural Analysis of a Rack System for Using in Agriculture

The paper deals with a construction design and structural analysis of the rack system which will be used for storage of steel tubes of pressure pipeline for fodder mixtures transportation in agricultural company. Structure of the designed equipment is made by the welding of steel parts and consists of the main framework and four pull-out racks on both sides. Racks move by means of human power through a rotating crank. Every individual pull-out racks is able to carries pipes of various dimensions, both length and diameter with total weight up to 3 tons with respect to customer requests. Since it is a prototype’s structure, we have designed main dimensions of it, material and technology for production and performed also structural analyses as the integral part of every engineering design. Structural analyses were conducted by means of numeric procedure known as finite element method. With respect to the used steel profiles shell elements were used for FE model. Analyses were performed for maximal loading cases in order to identify the level of safety in the most exposed locations of the structure.