Buckling, torsion, and biaxial bending of cold-formed steel beams

Codes for the design of cold-formed steel beams against lateral buckling are often inappropriately based on studies of hot-rolled I-beams, while there is little appropriate guidance on how to design cold-formed channels for torsion effects and zed beams for biaxial bending resulting from loading in the plane of the web. This paper summarises some of the recent research carried out at the University of Sydney on the lateral buckling strengths of cold-formed steel beams, and on the development of appropriate rules for designing channel and zed beams for torsion and biaxial bending.