Local and Overall Buckling in Thin‐Walled Beams and Columns

Abstract

The design of steel beams and columns must take into account overall instability (Euler, torsional, lateral‐torsional buckling, etc.), and also, if the section is made up of thin plate elements, the instability of the component plates in the form of local plate buckling. The possible interaction of these two modes of buckling, and its effect on member stability and strength, is therefore of interest. A tool has been developed for this type of analysis by adapting a finite element for a thin‐walled beam‐column of arbitrary cross section to include “local” degrees of freedom, allowing cross‐sectional distortion. The formulation involves geometric nonlinearities due to large displacements and rotations, but material behavior is limited to the elastic case.