Elastic buckling of thin-walled members with corrugated elements

Although corrugated steel sheets are used extensively in many building applications, very little research has been done on the buckling of thin-walled members with corrugated elements. Research has been limited to the study of beams with trapezoidally corrugated webs and flanges of flat plate. This paper describes a finite strip buckling analysis for investigating the buckling behaviour of cold-formed C- and Z-section purlins with corrugations. The analysis is performed by the computer program THIN-WALL, which can predict the local, distortional, flexural and flexural-torsional buckling modes of a section and draw the shapes of these modes on the screen. Examples are given of a C-section in compression and a Z-section in bending.