Facade Engineering Research
In the façade industry, thin-walled aluminum or steel frame elements are used often with slender open cross-sections with low torsional stiffness. It is generally subjected to a complex loading condition where axial, bending, shear, and torsional stresses may act simultaneously. Due to these thin and slender sections, members may fail in buckling even before the yield strength is reached. This effect refers to lateral torsional buckling (LTB), which requires good understanding of structural behavior which requires highly experienced skills and often ignored by practicing façade engineers. Ignoring this effect or checking may lead to either uneconomical design or in some instances unsafe designs. Hence the engineers need to be familiar with the LTB checking, this paper has tried to illustrate a Software based checking and code validation methods.
BES research paper on Facade Engineering Design has been published on an international technical organisation.
