Lateral-Torsional Buckling design for pultruded FRP beams

This paper presents an investigation into the development of a design procedure for Pultruded Fibre Reinforced Polymers (PFRP) beams failing by the elastic buckling mode of Lateral-Torsional Buckling (LTB). The design procedure is based on the European design approach for uniform members in bending of structural steel. In particular, the calibration method adopts the general case 'resistance' formula in Eurocode 3 (EN 1993-1-1:2005), and follows a standard design from testing procedure given in Eurocode 0 (EN 1990:2002) when calibrating the 'design model' to determine the partial factor γ_M for a member instability check. The test population for calibration has 114 LTB buckling resistances using four PFRP section sizes of I and channel shapes. The non-dimensional slenderness parameter is defined using the local flange buckling strength instead of the yield strength. An imperfection factor of 0.34 and partial factor of 1.3 are shown to be appropriate for calculation of the LTB moment of resistance.