ELASTIC LOCAL BUCKLING OF TROUGH GIRDERS

An elastic finite strip method of analysis is used to study the linear local buckling or bifurcation and the nonlinear post-local buckling behavior of isolated trough girders in bending The method assumes a constant stress in the longitudinal direction and so is applicable to the uniform bending case This results in a solution that is efficient computationally The nonlinear stiffness equations are presented and the accuracy of these is demonstrated by a comparison to tests and independent theoretical solutions The comparison between theory and experiment is good The variation of the local buckling coefficient with the cross-sectional parameters is demonstrated and a design equation is proposed It is shown that local buckling can be delayed by the provision of a longitudinal web stiffener and a design equation is proposed The postbuckling of a typical trough girder is then considered with the moment-curvature relationship stress distribution and deformations all being addressed in the study. © ASCE.