Computational Analysis of Cold-Formed Steel Columns with Initial Imperfections

Cold-formed steel (CFS) structures experience very complicated buckling and post-buckling performance. The presence of any kind of uncertainties complicates the calculation of such structures. Thin-walled CFS members are known to be particularly vulnerable to the influence of initial geometric imperfections. These imperfections may be the outcome of the manufacturing process, shipping and storage or the construction process. The article provides the results of nonlinear buckling analyses of CFS C-shaped compressed columns and evaluates the influence of imperfections on the load-bearing capacity of the tested members. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecomons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).