Elastic and inelastic buckling analysis of thin-walled tapered members

Stiffness matrices for geometric nonlinear analysis of thin-walled tapered members, applicable to large displacement problems, are derived and incorporated into a finite-element program. Based on the assumptions of Vlasov, the stiffness coefficients are obtained from the total potential energy expression by using the artificial intelligent symbolic package MACSYMA. For illustrative purposes elastic and inelastic buckling analyses are carried out on various single-member structures and on a planar frame. Results are compared with those obtained by existing approaches.