RESEARCH ARTICLE
Stability of Steel Columns with Non-Uniform Cross-Sections
Theodore G. Konstantakopoulos , Ioannis G. Raftoyiannis *, George T. Michaltsos
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 1
Last Page: 7
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-6-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801206010001
Article History:
Received Date: 15/09/2011Revision Received Date: 1/12/2011
Acceptance Date: 2/12/2011
Electronic publication date: 13/1/2012
Collection year: 2012
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In this work, non-uniform steel members with or without initial geometrical or loading imperfections, that are loaded by axial forces applied concentrically or eccentrically and by concentrated moments applied at the ends or at intermediate points, are studied. More specifically, steel members with varying cross-sections, tapered or stepped or members consisting by two different tapered parts are considered. The formulation presented in this work is based on solving the governing equation of the problem through a numerical method where the eigenshapes of the member are employed. A failure plasticity criterion is introduced for members especially the short ones that will never reach the elastic critical buckling load. Although only the simply supported beam-column case is studied herein, it is obvious that the method can be extended to multi-span beams and frames, by employing the corresponding eigenshapes. Useful diagrams are presented for both the critical buckling loads and the equilibrium paths showing the influence of the main characteristics of the beam-column.