Steel storage pallet rack structures are three-dimensional framed structures, which are widely used to store different kinds of goods. For the easy accessibility to stored products, pallet racks are not usually braced in the down-aisle direction. The down-aisle stability is mostly provided by the characteristics of beam-to-upright connections, and the characteristics of upright base connections. In this paper, calculation for moment capacity of beam-to-upright connections is carried out. A mechanical model is presented firstly. Based on the model, moment capacity is related to the failure capacity, directly determined by the failure mode, of the topmost tab of the beam-end-connector and the corresponding upright wall. Different methods to predict the failure capacity are derived for two types of failure modes, i.e. crack of tab and crack of upright wall. The new method has shown a satisfactory agreement with experimental results demonstrating the reliability of the model in predicting the moment capacity of beam-to-upright connections.
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