Interactive buckling of steel C-beams with different lengths - From short to long beams

The present paper deals with the interactive buckling of thin-walled C-beams with imperfections, subjected to the bending moment in the web plane when the shear lag phenomenon and distortional deformations are taken into account. A plate model (2D) was adopted for the C-beams. The structures were assumed to be simply supported at the ends. Two kinds of cross-sections in the C-beams were considered: channels and lip channels. A method of the modal solution to the coupled buckling problem within Koiter's asymptotic theory, using the semi-analytical method (SAM) and the transition matrix method, was applied. The calculations were carried out for C-beams of different lengths - from short through medium-long to long beams.