COMPUTER-ANALYSIS OF THIN-WALLED STRUCTURAL MEMBERS

The calculation of the stresses and failure modes in thin-walled struc tural members is a complex procedure. Structural designers will often need help in analysing these types of structures. A vehicle for provid ing this help is the computer program developed for the microcomputer. In this paper, a computer procedure is described for the cross-sectio n analysis and elastic buckling analysis of thin-walled structural mem bers. The cross-section analysis calculates the section properties, wa rping displacements, and the longitudinal and shear stresses for thin- walled open and closed cross-sections of any shape. The longitudinal s tresses are used to perform an elastic finite strip buckling analysis of thin-walled structural members. The analysis can be done for a numb er of different buckle half-wavelengths of the member and the load fac tor and buckled shape are output for each length. The analysis is perf ormed by the user-friendly computer program THIN-WALL, which is also d escribed in the paper.