INTERACTIVE BUCKLING OF THIN-WALLED CLOSED ELASTIC BEAM-COLUMNS WITH INTERMEDIATE STIFFENERS

The design of thin-walled beam-columns must take into account the over all instability and the instability of component plates in the form of local buckling. This investigation is concerned with interactive buck ling of thin-walled closed cross-section beam-columns with central int ermediate stiffeners under axial compression and constant bending mome nt. The beams are assumed to be simply supported at the ends. The asym ptotic expansion established by Byskov and Hutchinson is employed in t he numerical calculations performed using the transition matrix method . The paper's aim is to contribute to the study of the equilibrium pat h in the post-buckling behaviour of imperfect structures using the fir st order approximation. The calculations are carried out for a few dos ed beam-columns.