Warehouse Floor Load Bearing Capacity

The floors in a warehouse are primarily loaded with forklift trucks and pallet racking.

Warehouse floor load bearing capacity.

The pallets generate point loads on the floor via the beams frames and the uprights. For example a floor joist at 16 spacing s that can carry 53 pounds per linear foot would translate into a 318 pound single point load at its center. Increasing the total weight on the floor to 4 480 pounds however results in a live load of 40 psf which is beyond the floor s load capacity. It is expressed as pounds per square foot.

This floor has a bearing capacity of two tons per square meter. Typical vehicle operating at floor level is a pallet transporter hand truck or trailer often having maximum 3 tons capacity and small load carrying polyurethane wheels. When loading a floor with tons of equipment the actual capacity per square foot must be known in advance. Don t install a mezzanine or other heavy equipment in your distribution center or warehouse without knowing the exact floor and ground.

The typical floor is often half foot thick concrete and has a capacity of 25 000 pounds. A uniform load rating on a beam can easily be translated into what an equivalent maximum point load can be. Floor surfaces on which this equipment operates are typically flat and level. Another factor that influences the design and specification of ground bearing concrete floors is the nature of the load that they have to support.

Floor load capacity is the total maximum weight a floor is engineered to support over a given area. Simply a floor slab functions to distribute without deformation or cracking the loads applied to it to the weaker sub grade below in the case of a ground bearing slab or to the piles supporting it if designed as a suspended ground slab and to provide a suitable wearing surface upon which the operations in the facility may be carried out. With an evenly distributed live load of 30 psf which the tables show the floor is able to support the total weight on the floor would be about 3 360 pounds. In the construction and logistics world all too often statements are made like.