Bracing requirements for inelastic castellated beams

Lateral-torsional buckling can be avoided by properly spaced and designed lateral bracing. Bracings are usually assumed to be elastic, and so may be characterized by their elastic stiffnesses. It is well known that an elastic lateral brace restricts partially the lateral buckling of slender beams and increases the elastic buckling moment. However, a full study of the effect of lateral braces on inelastic buckling has not been made especially for castellated beams, and it is not known whether the limiting stiffness for elastic buckling can be applied to castellated beams that buckle inelastically. This paper develops a three dimensional (3-D) finite-element model using a finite-element program and uses it to investigate the effect of elastic lateral bracing stiffness on the inelastic flexural-torsional buckling of simply supported castellated beams with an elastic lateral restraint under pure bending. It was found that for inelastic castellated beams, the effect of bracing initially is increased to some extent as the lateral unbraced length increases and then decreased until the beam behaves as an elastic beam. In other words, the effect of bracing depends not only on the stiffness of the restraint but also on the modified slenderness of the beam. Also, the results show that Winter's simplified method to determine full brace requirements cannot be applied to inelastic castellated beams. Therefore, a general equation is proposed to determine the value of optimum stiffness (kopt) in terms of the beam's slenderness, applicable to all castellated beams under pure bending.