Lateral-distortional buckling of tee-section beams

Abstract A fine element method that incorporates plate behaviour is developed for modelling the lateral-distortional buckling of tee-section beams. The method is shown to agree well with independent buckling results for tee-beams. Since relatively few elements are needed to obtain satisfactory convergence, the method is efficient computationally. The finite element analysis is used to study the elastic distortional buckling of tee-beams of practical geometry under moment gradient. The disparities found between the elastic flexural-torsional and distortional buckling moments are discussed.