The Effect of Steel Beam Elastic Restraint on the Critical Moment of Lateral Torsional Buckling

This paper reports the results of the next stage of the authors' investigations into the effect of the elastic action of support nodes on the lateral torsional buckling of steel beams with a bisymmetric I-section. The analysis took into account beam elastic restraint against warping and against rotation in the bending plane. Such beams are found in building frames or frame structures. Taking into account the support conditions mentioned above allows for more effective design of such elements, compared with the boundary conditions of fork support, commonly adopted by designers. The entire range of variation in node rigidity was considered in the study, namely from complete freedom of warping to complete restraint, and from complete freedom of rotation relative to the stronger axis of the cross section (free support) to complete blockage (full fixity). The beams were conservatively assumed to be freely supported against lateral rotation, i.e., rotation in the lateral torsional buckling plane. Calculations were performed for various values of the indexes of fixity against warping and against rotation in the beam bending plane. In the study, formulas for the critical moment of bilaterally fixed beams were developed. Also, approximate formulas were devised for elastic restraint in the support nodes. The formulas concerned the most frequent loading variants applied to single-span beams. The critical moments determined in the study were compared, with values obtained using LTBeamN software (FEM). Good compliance of results was observed. The derived formulas are useful for the engineering design of this type of structures. The designs are based on a more accurate calculation model, which, at the same time offers simplicity of calculation.