Study of Local and Distortional Stability of Thin-Walled Structures

Thin-walled structures have an increasingly large and growing field of application in the engineering sector, the goal behind using this type of structure is efficiency in terms of resistance and cost, however the stability of its components (the thin walls) remains the first aspect of the behavior, and a primordial factor in the design process. The hot rolled sections are known by a consequent post-buckling reserve, cold-formed steel sections which are thin-walled elements also benefit, in this case, it seems essential to take into account the favorable effects of this reserve in to the verification procedure of the resistance with respect to the three modes of failures of this type of structure. The design method that takes into account this reserve of resistance is inevitably the effective width method. The direct strength method has been developed to improve the speed and efficiency of the design of thin-walled profiles. The latter mainly uses the buckling loads (for Local, Distortional and Global mode) obtained from a numerical analysis and the resistance curves calibrated experimentally to predict the ultimate load of the profile. Among those, the behavior of a set of Cshaped profiles (highly industrialized) is studied, this type of section is assumed to be very prone to modes of local and distortional instability. The outcome of this investigation revealed very relevant conclusions both scientifically and practically