A mechanistic approach for designing steel members for lateral torsional buckling

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Lateral torsional buckling is a spatial buckling phenomenon that is naturally captured through shell or 3D finite element modelling. While FEA programs, including S-Frame, are equipped with such features, they are impractical to use for routine design since the modeling effort required to characterize member end conditions and connections, result post-processing, etc. is significant. The use of shell FEA for designing typical steel buildings involving hundreds of beams and columns is clearly impractical. As such, standards provide relatively simple design equations to characterize lateral torsional buckling resistance. However, such solutions are limited to rather simple cases. Thus, there is a practical need to devise an analysis and design technique that is (a) robust enough to handle various design situations and (b) simple enough to be used in routine design involving hundreds of members. Within the above context, the proposed research aims at developing solution strategies that meet both criteria and which can integrate seamlessly within the existing S-FRAME and S-STEEL software architecture.