Buckling analysis of thin-walled sections under general loading conditions

This paper presents an investigation of the buckling behaviour of thin-walled sections subjected to general loading conditions. The semi-analytical finite strip method is used. The existing results are only for sections subjected to a uniform loading, namely: uniform compression, uniform bending and uniform distributed loads, which are applied at the shear centre. For a general loading condition, we proposed the realizing linear analysis first to give longitudinal stresses. The stiffness matrix is provided in the standard manner. Each strip is divided into cells and longitudinal stresses are recorded in these cells. The integrations are performed on each cell domain and the sum of them provides the geometric matrix of the strip.