Elasto-Plastic Stability Analysis of the Frame Structures Using the Tangent Modulus Approach

This paper presents the procedure for stability analysis of frames in elastic-plastic domain using the concept of the tangent modulus. When the buckling of structure occurs in plastic domain, it is necessary to replace the constant modulus of elasticity E with the tangent modulus Et. Tangent modulus is stress dependent function and takes into account the changes of the member stiffness in the inelastic range. Formulation of the corresponding stiffness matrices is based upon the solution of the equation of bending of the beam according to the second order theory. Numerical analysis was performed using the code ALIN, developed in the C++ programming language