The United States National Archives stores billions of temporary, inactive records in Federal Records Centers (FRCs) across the nation including an underground location in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. The document storage center is in an excavated limestone cave, 60 ft. below the surface. These caves are the result of a booming mining industry in the late 19th and 20th centuries. With the end of that era, the underground spaces were retrofitted and adapted for storage and commercial use.

The Frost team was enlisted to analyze document storage rack systems at the Lee’s Summit underground FRC facility. Frost was tasked with developing a safe methodology for raising individual rack posts in order to level the existing infrastructure without needing to unload the documents already stored.

Frost was tasked with developing a safe methodology for raising individual rack posts in order to level the existing infrastructure without needing to unload the documents already stored.

After running several iterations of finite element models with imposed displacements specified by the client, Frost determined that the intended displacement would cause fracture in primary bracing elements in the rack system. Frost recommended a physical validation test and proposed multiple alternative solutions including raising multiple posts simultaneously to reduce relative strain concentration and installing enhanced bracing in the overstressed locations.