Local-Plate and Distortional Postbuckling Behavior of Cold-Formed Steel Lipped Channel Columns with Intermediate Stiffeners

Abstract

This paper reports a detailed investigation concerning the local-plate and distortional elastic postbuckling behaviors of cold-formed steel lipped channel columns with web and flange intermediate stiffeners (the corresponding unstiffened lipped channel column postbuckling behaviors are often used as reference). This investigation relies on results obtained through geometrically nonlinear analyses based on a recently developed and numerically implemented generalized beam theory (GBT) formulation that incorporates (1) conventional (no shear deformation), (2) shear (nonlinear warping), and (3) transverse extension deformation modes. The numerical results shown provide the evolution, along a given local-plate or distortional postbuckling equilibrium path, of the column (1) deformed configuration and (2) relevant displacement profiles and/or stress distributions—mostly for validation purposes, some of them are compared with values yielded by shell finite element analyses performed by means of the code