Published Paper Details:

Thin-walled cold-formed steel (CFS) members are composed of stiffened, partially stiffened, or unstiffened elements. Cold-formed sections have widespread use in the building industries. They are used where the loads are not large and thus where light members will suffice, achieving substantial economics. In addition, they are easily fabricated into a great variety of shapes, and may be formed in sheet metal shops which are widely available. Cold-formed thin-walled steel beams may undergo buckling modes such as local buckling, distortional buckling lateral-torsional buckling or a combination of these before failure. It is necessary to investigate the behavior of cold formed steel members under buckling. The buckling behavior of various available sections and also that of new sections can be analyzed using softwares and compared with experimental results. Direct strength method also can be studied to calculate the capacity of CFS sections, and also to compare the accuracy. The study of CFS beams can be extended to CFS buildings, which also has better lateral load carrying capacity.