Buckling behavior of cold-formed zed-purlins partially restrained by steel sheeting

This paper presents a study on the buckling behaviour of purlin-sheeting systems under wind uplift loading. The restraint provided by the sheeting to the purlin is modeled by using two springs representing the translational and rotational restraints. The analysis is performed using finite strip methods in which the pre-buckling stress is calculated based on the same model used for the buckling analysis rather than taken as the ‘pure bending’ stress. The results obtained from this study show that, for both local and distortional buckling, the restraints have significant influence on the critical loads through their influence on the pre-buckling stress rather than directly on the buckling modes. While for lateral-torsional buckling, the influence of the restraints on the critical loads is mainly due to their influence on the buckling modes rather than the pre-buckling stress.