LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN THE GBT ANALYSIS OF THIN-WALLED STEEL STRUCTURES

This work presents a state-of-the-art report of the most recent developments concerning formulations, numerical implementations and applications of Generalised Beam Theory (GBT) to analyse the structural response of thin-walled steel members and frames. After a brief overview of the cross-section analysis, one addresses new findings dealing with the use of GBT to assess the (i) first-order behaviour of steel-concrete composite bridge decks, (ii) buckling and post-buckling behaviour of members and frames with arbitrary loading and support conditions, (iii) vibration behaviour of load-free and loaded open-section members and (iv) dynamic behaviour of members subjected to periodic and moving loads. In order to illustrate the unique features and show the potential of the GBT approach, several numerical results are presented and discussed. For validation purposes, most of these results are compared with values yielded by shell finite element analyses, performed in the codes ADINA, ABAQUS and ANSYS.