Lateral torsional buckling of compressed open thin walled beams: Experimental confirmations

This paper provides an approximate solution for the differential equations that govern the buckling of beams with a gradually changing of the thin-walled C cross section. This is a coupled problem of flexural and torsional buckling, whose exact solution is hard to get. We have therefore chosen to use an energy approach through the Dirichlet's principle. It allows, using the Ritz-Rayleigh algorithm, the quick implementation of a solution close to the real value of the critical load. Because of the complexity of the problem, it was considered appropriate to provide an experimental validation of the theoretical results with proper laboratory tests.