Elastic‐plastic buckling and other effects of membrane forces in thin‐walled structures

Abstract

A non‐linear elastic‐plastic Generalised Beam Theory (GBT) is formulated and used to investigate the buckling behaviour of aluminium and stainless steel thin‐walled members. The analysis consists of calculation cross‐section (local) and member (global) deformations and has been shown to be a very efficient tool for analyzing local and global stability behavior of thin‐walled cold‐formed steel (isotropic) and composite (orthotropic) members. In this work particular attention is paid to the need to define the stability problem in terms of instantaneous elastic moduli. Verification of the proposed GBT, its unique features and capabilities are illustrated by the example of uniformly compessed rectangular plate of stainless steel.