LOCAL BUCKLING IN CURVED BOX MEMBERS.

In curved structural members, the flanges of all horizontally curved members and the webs of all vertically curved members are composed of flat plate elements which can be treated as annular sector plates. In this study, classical linear elastic theory of buckling of sector plates is employed to determine buckling behavior. The critical buckling stress is computed from theoretical formulas by a semi-analytical semi-numerical method. The procedure employs the classical method of separation of variables with Fourier series and finite difference techniques. Results are presented for the buckling coefficients of a number of annular sectors under the action of normal stresses. The results indicated that curvature of the plate has little effect on buckling.