• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1440-1463
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• 2018

The Wagner coefficient is a key parameter used to describe the inelastic lateral-torsional buckling (LTB) behaviour of the I-beam, since even for a doubly-symmetric I-section with residual stress, it becomes a monosymmetric I-section due to the characteristics of the non-symmetrical distribution of plastic regions. However, so far no theoretical derivation on the energy equation and Wagner's coefficient have been presented due to the limitation of Vlasov's buckling theory. In order to simplify the nonlinear analysis and calculation, this paper presents a simplified mechanical model and an analytical solution for doubly-symmetric I-beams under pure bending, in which residual stresses and yielding are taken into account. According to the plate-beam theory proposed by the lead author, the energy equation for the inelastic LTB of an I-beam is derived in detail, using only the Euler-Bernoulli beam model and the Kirchhoff-plate model. In this derivation, the concept of the instantaneous shear centre is used and its position can be determined naturally by the condition that the coefficient of the cross-term in the strain energy should be zero; formulae for both the critical moment and the corresponding critical beam length are proposed based upon the analytical buckling equation. An analytical formula of the Wagner coefficient is obtained and the validity of Wagner hypothesis is reconfirmed. Finally, the accuracy of the analytical solution is verified by a FEM solution based upon a bi-modulus model of I-beams. It is found that the critical moments given by the analytical solution almost is identical to those given by Trahair's formulae, and hence the analytical solution can be used as a benchmark to verify the results obtained by other numerical algorithms for inelastic LTB behaviour.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.985-1000
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• 2015

The method of cross-section analysis for different sections in a structural frame has been widely investigated since the 1960s for determination of sectional capacities of beam-columns. Many hand-calculated equations and design graphs were proposed for the specific shape and type of sections in pre-computer age decades ago. In design of many practical sections, these equations may be uneconomical and inapplicable for sections with irregular shapes, leading to the high construction cost or inadequate safety. This paper not only proposes a versatile numerical procedure for sectional analysis of beam-columns, but also suggests a method to account for residual stress and geometric imperfections separately and the approach is applied to design of high strength steels requiring axial force-moment interaction for advanced analysis or direct analysis. A cross-section analysis technique that provides interaction curves of arbitrary welded sections with consideration of the effects of residual stress by meshing the entire section into small triangular fibers is formulated. In this study, two doubly symmetric sections (box-section and H-section) fabricated by high-strength steel is utilized to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method against a hand-calculation procedure. The effects of residual stress are mostly not considered explicitly in previous works and they are considered in an explicit manner in this paper which further discusses the basis of the yield surface theory for design of structures made of high strength steels.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.10 no.3 s.36
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• pp.509-523
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• 1998

A consistent finite element formulation and analytic solutions are presented for stability of thin-walled circular arch. The total potential energy is derived by applying the principle of linearized virtual work and including second order terms of finite semitangential rotations. As a result, the energy functional corresponding to the semitangential moment is newly derived. Analytic solutions for the out-of-plane buckling of symmetric thin-walled curved beam subjected to pure bending or uniform compression with simply supported boundary conditions are obtained. For finite element analysis, the cubic Hermitian polynomials are utilized as shape functions and $16{\times}16$ stiffness matrix for curved beam elements and $14{\times}14$ stiffness matrix for straight beam elements are evaluated, respectively. In order to illustrate the accuracy of this study, analytical and numerical results for lateral buckling problems of circular arch are presented and compared with available analytical solutions.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.281-301
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• 2004

The paper begins by presenting a unified variational approach to the lateral-torsional buckling (LTB) analysis of doubly symmetric prismatic and tapered thin-walled beams with open cross-sections, which accounts for the influence of the pre-buckling deflections. This approach (i) extends the kinematical assumptions usually adopted for prismatic beams, (ii) consistently uses shell membrane theory in general coordinates and (iii) adopts Trefftz's criterion to perform the bifurcation analysis. The proposed formulation is then applied to investigate the influence of the pre-buckling deflections on the LTB behaviour of prismatic and web-tapered I-section simply supported beams and cantilevers. After establishing an interesting analytical result, valid for prismatic members with shear centre loading, several elastic critical moments/loads are presented, discussed and, when possible, also compared with values reported in the literature. These numerical results, which are obtained by means of the Rayleigh-Ritz method, (i) highlight the qualitative differences existing between the LTB behaviours of simply supported beams and cantilevers and (ii) illustrate how the influence of the pre-buckling deflections on LTB is affected by a number of factors, namely ($ii_1$) the minor-to-major inertia ratio, ($ii_2$) the beam length, ($ii_3$) the location of the load point of application and ($ii_4$) the bending moment diagram shape.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.6
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• pp.541-554
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• 2023

An unbraced cantilever beam subjected to loads which cause bending about the major axis may buckle in a flexuraltorsional mode by deflecting laterally and twisting. For the efficient design of these structures, design engineers require a simple accurate equation for the elastic flexural-torsional buckling load. Existing solutions for the flexural-torsional buckling of cantilever beams have mainly been derived by numerical methods which are tedious to implement. In this research, an attempt is made to derive a theoretical equation by the energy method using different buckled shapes. However, the results of a finite element flexural-torsional buckling analysis reveal that the buckled shapes for the lateral deflection and twist rotation are different for cantilever beams. In particular, the buckled shape for the twist rotation also varies with the section size. In light of these findings, the finite element flexural-torsional buckling analysis was then used to derive simple accurate equations for the elastic buckling load and moment for cantilever beams subjected to end point load, uniformly distributed load and end moment. The results are compared with previous research and it was found that the equations derived in this study are accurate and simple to use.