Bimoment Contribution to Buckling of Thin-Walled Beams with Different Boundary Conditions

Abstract

In this paper the influence of bimoment, induced by external axial loads, on the global buckling of thin-walled Z-section beams, subjected to different boundary conditions, is studied. Since bimoment varies along the beam axis, the problem of torsional and torsional-flexural buckling of thin-walled beams is defined by linear homogeneous differential equations of the second-order theory with a variable coefficient. To obtain the buckling load numerically, a finite-difference method is employed for discretizing the governing differential equations. To verify the validity and the accuracy of this study, numerical solutions are presented and compared with those calculated by simulation software.