Stability Analysis of Thin-Walled Non-Symmetric Steel Beams

The beam has for many years been an important part of civil engineering structures. Successful design of structures involving beam elements requires a well-developed description of the beam behaviour. This has been recognized by researchers and during the last century great emphasis has been given towards the establishment of linear as well as non-linear beam theories. A review of some of the literature connected to beam theories is presented in section 1.1 in this paper.

On basis of previous chapters a numerical formulation of the non-linear stability problem is obtained in chapter 8. The performance of the incremental updated Lagrangian two node hybrid element developed, is discussed by considering four canonical problems. The results strongly indicate that initial deformations and non-symmetric properties are essential for a proper determination of the critical load.