Buckling of composite thin-walled members

Abstract

The use of pultruded fiber reinforced polymeric (FRP) members in civil engineering applications can greatly reduce construction time and maintenance cost of structures, because pultruded members have high specific strength and excellent corrosion resistance compared to steel and concrete. Pultruded members for civil engineering application are mostly made of a polymeric resin system reinforced with E-glass fibers and, as a result, they have low elastic moduli. Therefore, stability is an important issue in the design of pultruded members. In this paper, the results of an experimental investigation into the global buckling behavior of pultruded thin-walled members subjected to axial compression are presented. The analytical solutions are validated through a comparison with the results of FE analysis as well as the experimental results.