Buckling of Pretwisted Steel Columns (original) (raw)

Buckling is a mode of failure observed in compression members due to structural instability. Inducing a natural pretwist along the length of a column alters its resistance along the centroidal axis, benefitting the buckling strength by weakening the strong flexural plane and strengthening the weak one. This research investigates the effect of pretwisting on the buckling capacity of steel columns through experimental and numerical methods, including linear perturbation analysis and finite element modeling. Findings show that pretwisting significantly improves elastic buckling in fixed-ended columns, enhancing their load-carrying capacity, particularly in comparison to pinned-ended columns.