• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.575-584
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• 2006

In this paper, a shear-flexible finite element model is developed for the buckling analysis of axially loaded, thin-walled composite I-beams. Based on an orthogonal Cartesian coordinate system, the displacement fields are defined using the first-order shear-deformable beam theory. The derived element takes into account flexural shear deformation and torsional warping deformation. Three different types of beam elements, namely, the two-noded, three-noded, and four-noded beam elements, were developed to solve the governing equations. An inverse iteration with shift eigenvalue solution was used to solve the resulting linearized buckling problem. A parametric study was conducted to show the importance of shear flexibility and fiber orientation on the buckling behavior of thin-walled composite beams. A good agreement was obtained among the proposed shear-flexible model, other results available in literature, and the finite element solution.