Out-Of-Plane Buckling of Steel I-Section Circular Arches

Circular arches subjected to in plane loading are restrained with discrete lateral bracing to improve their out of plane stabilities in many cases. The arch segment between two adjacent bracing may buckle out of plane if the effective length of the arch segment is sufficiently large. But replacing the flat web with corrugated web will increase the out of plane stability of the circular arches. This paper investigates the out of plane elastic buckling of steel I-section circular arches with flat web and sinusoidal corrugated web. This study considers pin-ended and fixed circular steel arches with a sinusoidal corrugated web under a uniform radial load or uniform vertical load to elucidate numerically their different failure modes. Arches subjected to in-plane loading may suddenly deflect laterally and twist out of loading plane and fail in an out-of-plane elastic buckling mode.