Elastic-plastic buckling of columns in building frames

The Eurocode 3 method for checking structural systems composed of a compressed column and two adjacent beams is studied. Sway and non-sway buckling modes in elastic-plastic behaviour are considered. In EC3, the evaluation of the buckling strength of a compressed member is based on a pin-ended column whose effective length is determined from Wood's abacuses taking into account the stiffness of the adjacent beams and columns. Since the European buckling curves have been established from studies based on a geometrically non-linear elastic plastic behaviour of compressed members, it is not possible to assure that all joints and adjacent elements remain elastic. A parametrical study is carried out for different combinations of column and beam cross-sections and lengths and different shapes of the bow imperfections. The effects of residual stresses, progressive yielding and strain-hardening are considered as well. The results show that Wood's abacuses provide safe values for the ultimate resistance of the columns in the case of sway and non-sway modes, more conservative in the second case than in the first one. They emphasise also the influence of the interaction between the initial imperfections of the columns and the relative length of the adjacent beams.