Some basic plastic mechanisms in the local buckling of thin-walled steel structures

Abstract When a thin-walled steel structure fails it does so by means of a spatial plastic mechanism. Although at first sight they appear to be complicated, these mechanisms are found to consist of an assembly of basic mechanisms which are compatible with each other. Eight basic mechanisms and three types of fully-plastic zones have so far been observed in laboratory tests and their characteristic equations are derived here. Examples show how they can be used to analyse failure mechanisms of actual structures.