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001471
Amy Heilig, PE
2017-08-23

Local Buckling of Members as per ADM 2015

If an aluminum member section is comprised of slender elements, failure can occur due to the local buckling of the flanges or webs before the member can reach full strength. In the add-on module RF-/ALUMINUM ADM, there are now three options for determining the nominal flexural strength for the limit state of local buckling, Mnlb, from Section F.3 in the 2015 Aluminum Design Manual. The three options include sections F.3.1 Weighted Average Method, F.3.2 Direct Strength Method, and F.3.3 Limiting Element Method.

All three methods in Section F.3 Local Buckling used to determine the local buckling limit state reference Sections B.5.4 and B.5.5. These sections include determining the strength of elements in pure compression and elements in flexural compression. The local buckling strength further depends on whether or not the element is supported on one or both edges in addition to the width to thickness ratio, b/t.

Sections F.3.1, F.3.2, and F.3.3 provide different variations for calculating the local buckling strength. The Direct Strength Method is the most accurate and comprehensive method. However, the Weighted Average Method is the default option in the RF-/ALUMINUM ADM detail settings because it is used in the majority of the ADM example problems.

Author

Amy Heilig is the CEO of the USA Subsidiary Office in Philadelphia, PA. She is responsible for sales, technical support, and continued program development for the North American market.

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