Wood pallet performance analysis with palletized drums in distribution and warehousing

Abstract

As an integral part of the supply chain, wooden pallets are produced in large quantities, with 849 million new and recycled wooden pallets being manufactured annually in the industry. Pallets are currently designed using a uniformly distributed load to determine the load capacity. This highly generalized approach often leads to overdesign and increased material utilization. Due to a phenomenon called load bridging, when discrete packages such as corrugated boxes or industrial drums are shipped on a pallet, the weight of the load tends to distribute unevenly. This can lead to an increased load capacity for the pallet. Industrial drums are commonly used to transport large amounts of liquids and chemicals; however, their load bridging effect has not been previously researched. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of 55-gallon drums on the pressure distribution and deflection of stringer class wooden pallets using multiple support conditions and pallet designs. Results of the study indicated that loading pallets with drums significantly reduces the deflection of the pallet in all support conditions when compared to a uniformly distributed load. It was also observed that plastic and metal drums distributed their load to the pallets differently, which resulted in significantly different load bridging effects for each drum type.