Elastic critical local buckling stress in cold-formed lipped channel and hat sections under uniform compression

Abstract

The classical design approach for the elastic critical local buckling load of the cold-formed open section (CFOS) neglects the plate element interaction at the cross-section, which compromises the benefits of CFOSs designed for high performance. To derive a novel formula for the local buckling coefficient, taking into account the plate element interaction at the cross-section, a series of displacement functions for expressing the buckling deformations of the web, flanges, and lips caused by local buckling in CFOSs is proposed in this paper. The effect of cross-sectional geometry on the buckling coefficient was investigated using the proposed formula derived from Timoshenko’s plate buckling theory. Further, simplified formulae were proposed for the buckling coefficient and half wavelength of the elastic critical local buckling for practical use. The reliabilities of the proposed formulae were verified by comparing the results obtained from the proposed formulae with the analysis results based on the finite element method and finite strip method.