Elastic Lateral Buckling of Steel Beams

Abstract

A general numerical procedure for the determination of lateral-torsional critical buckling loads for elastic beams of singly symmetric I-section is presented. The procedure mades use of finite element techniques, and is applicable to beams with arbitrary vertical and lateral supports and arbitrary loading. Expressions for elastic and geometric stiffnesses are developed, the solution of the eigenvalue problem is considered, and examples are presented. The method can be extended to the inelastic case.