Buckling of cellular members loaded by an axial force

Cellular members are steel I-section members with large round web openings. Because of these openings, the material use of these members loaded in bending in more economical than for classical plain-webbed I-section members. These members are also used for applications in which they are loaded by an axial compressive force and a relatively large bending moment. However, the behaviour of cellular members in these loading conditions is still unknown, and must be investigated. As a part of this more extensive research, the authors have studied numerically the general elastic buckling behaviour of cellular members loaded by an axial force. In this paper, the results of this study are presented and compared with a proposed analytical expression for the flexural buckling load. It is found that this expression is accurate for the examined cellular members, the failure behaviour in compression of cellular members being very similar to that of plain-webbed members