Interactive buckling of thin-walled open elastic beam-columns with intermediate stiffeners

Influence of the interactive buckling on the post-buckling behaviour of thin-walled columns with imperfections is studied. This investigation is concerned with open elastic beam-columns with intermediate and edge stiffeners under axial compression and constant bending moment. The columns are assumed to be simply supported at the ends. The paper's aim is to contribute to the study of the equilibrium path in the post-buckling behaviour of imperfect structures using the first-order approximation. The present paper is the continuation of a paper by Kolakowski and Teter (1995, Int. J. Solids Structures 32, 1501-1516) where the interactive buckling of thin-walled dosed beam-columns with central intermediate stiffeners was considered.