Local and distortional buckling of cold-formed zed-section beams under uniformly distributed transverse loads

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the local and distortional buckling behaviour of cold-formed steel zed-section beams subjected to uniformly distributed transverse loads. The analysis is performed using a semi-analytical finite strip method. The beams investigated include both detached sections and restrained sections. The results obtained from the present study highlight the differences in the local and distortional buckling behaviours of the thin-walled sections between pure bending and the uniformly distributed loading.