number of plastic hinges in the superstructure to one. Trans- terest.

Since cold-formed steel members are often thin-walled

verse reinforcement was added in the regions of expected plas-
tic hinges to provide sufficient rotational capacity at these sec-
tions.
A detailed account of the studies outlined above and their
impact on the executive design of the Northumberland Strait
Crossing Project is given in Starossek (1997).
APPENDIX. REFERENCES
Clough, R. W., and Penzien, J. (1975). Dynamics a/structures. McGraw-
Hill, New York.
Starossek, U. (1997). "Zum progressiven kollaps mehrfeldriger brUck-
entragwerke [progressive collapse of multi-span bridge structures)."
Bautechnik, Berlin, Germany, 74(7),443-453 (in German).
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY on 01/30/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
structures, stability is a major concern. Thus, the calculation
of the local elastic buckling stress is fundamental to design.
Professor Marsh's examples show the influence of corner ra-
dius on angles, and a special case of flanges and box sections.
A simple numerical analysis conducted in Schafer (1997) il-
lustrates the influence of comer radius on lipped flanges, and
further highlights the shortcoming of using the flat width for
determining the elastic buckling stress.
The local buckling of an isolated lipped flange is studied
numerically via the finite strip method. The comer radius, r,
at the juncture of the flange and lip is systematically varied.
The corner is discretized into a minimum of 20 straight-line
elements. Two groups of isolated flanges in pure compression,

as shown in Fig. 6, are investigated. The first group has a right

Closure by Amin Ghali, Fellow,! ASCE, and
Gamil Tadros,6 Member, ASCE
The writers would like to thank the discussers for their com-
ments. They describe the locations of the reinforcement pro-
vided and give some details introduced to implement the re-
sults of the studies presented in the paper. The discussion is a
welcome complement to the article.
The paper is concerned with a problem encountered when
attempting to eliminate one hinge from each of two pairs of
adjacent intermediate hinges, as shown in Fig. 2(b). Lester and
Tadros (1995) gave the history and the participants in the de-
velopment of the design of the Confederation Bridge.
The second writer of the paper led a team to develop the
design concept. In this design, each of two consecutive spans
was provided with two intermediate hinges [Fig. 2(a)]. During
the design of details, the discussers proposed to eliminate one
hinge from each set [Fig. 2(b)]. The writers conducted the
analytical and experimental studies presented in the article to
examine the vulnerability of the proposed system to progres-
sive collapse. The studies showed that the proposed change
would in fact give a system vulnerable to such collapse; thus
the proposal was abandoned to return to the original system,
with double intermediate hinges [Fig. 2(a)].
angle (6 =90°) lip and a centerline flange width, B, of 31 mm,
a centerline lip length, D, of 11.3 mm, a thickness, t, of 1 mm,
and varying r. The second group has e = 45°, B = 31 mm, D
= 11.3 mm, t = 1 mm, and varying r.
The plate-buckling coefficient is defined in terms of the cen-
terline (or intersection of the median lines) width, B, not the
flat width, b, nor the out to out width, i.e.:
The result of systematically varying r for both groups is
shown in Figs. 7 and 8. A marked increase in k exists for the
90° lip as r increases, but a significant increase is not observed
for the 45° lip. Fig. 8 shows the k values versus the centerline
flange width over the flat width (Bib). For the 90° lip, large r
markedly decreases the flat width, but for the 45° lip the flat
width decreases much slower.
If the flat width is employed for the elastic buckling pre-
diction, then k is
If the average of the flat width and centerline width is used,
then

APPENDIX. REFERENCE

~~ E/ ~
B
Lester, B., and Tadros, G. (1995). "Northumberland Strait Crossing: De-
sign development of precast prestressed concrete bridge structure." J.,
Prestressed Concrete Inst., Vol. 40, No.5, 32-44.
J£ b

(0) Group One (b) Group Two

FIG.6. Isolated Lipped Flange

INFLUENCE OF BEND RADII ON LOCAL
8 7.00
BUCKLING IN COLD-FORMED SHAPES
6.00

Discussion by Benjamin W. Schafer,:1 5.00

Member, ASCE 4.00
oIoiI
3.00
Professor Marsh's technical note on the influence of bend -0- 90 dea. lip
radii examines a problem of both theoretical and practical in- 2.00 - 4 S dea.lip

SProf. of Civ. Engrg., The Univ. of Calgary, Calgary T2N IN4, AB, 1.00
Canada.
"Tech. Dir., Strait Crossing, Inc., 7th Floor, 1177-11 Ave. S.W., Cal- 0.00 +,-,"""'""-'--j-'-'-'...L.f-'-'-'-'+,-,"""'""-'--j-U-J...L.f-'--U-J-f-'-'"'--'-1f-'--WU-f-"u.J.-,-!
gary T2R lK9, AB, Canada.
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
"December 1997, Vol. 123, No. 12, by Cedric Marsh (Technical Note riD
13460).
'Instructor, Cornell Univ., 419 Hollister Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853. FIG. 7. Influence of Corner Radius on Lipped Flanges

1498/ JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / DECEMBER 1998

J. Struct. Eng. 1998.124:1498-1499.

 9.00 -r-----------------,
8.00
7.00
o
6.00 o
o
5.00 , ..,.' '0" ,0'" " Closure by Cedric Marsh/ Member, ASCE
4.00 .•.••• q. • •
3.00 o 90deg.lip
• 45 deg.lip
2.00 - - Ie based on b
, •• ' .Ie based on (B+b)12
1.00
0.00 +-'--'--'-'--+-"'-'---"-'-+-'--'-"--'-+-'-~_'___1--'--'--'-_'__1
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY on 01/30/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
BIb
FIG. 8. Approximating Influence of Corner Radius on Lipped
Flanges
k = 4 CD : b)/Z)
The performance of these approaches is demonstrated in
Fig. 8. Using the flat width is again shown unconservative.
Using the average of Band b works reasonably well for the
900 lip. The centerline width, B, provides a conservative ap-
proximation in all cases.
It is clear from these examples that from a strict elastic
buckling point of view the use of the flat width is unconser-
vative and erroneous. Professor Marsh suggests the intersec-
tion of the median lines, B in the examples here. This appears
a safe approach, but may be relatively conservative in some
special cases.
The conclusions that design specifications are in error due
to the use of the flat width is not as straightforward as con-
clusions about elastic buckling. Consider the Eurocode Part
1.3 Cold-Formed Thin Gauge Members and Sheetings (BCCS
1992), which uses the centerline dimension for the width, ver-
sus the American Iron and Steel Institute Specification for the
Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members (AISI
1996), which employs the flat width. Experiments in simple
pure compression show that the flat width (AISI) gave better
strength predictions than the centerline width (ECCS) ap-
proach (Veroci 1990). Whether one takes this result as a val-
idation of the width selected, or simply as a residual result of
using the empirical Winter equation for the strength calcula-
tion, is a matter of obvious debate. The fallacy of using flat
width for elastic buckling remains, yet extensions of this con-
clusions to design are not conclusive. A design strength curve
that more closely reflects the relationship between ultimate
strength and the true elastic buckling stress would be one ob-
vious solution.
It is worthy to note that these examples and that of Pro-
fessor Marsh cover local buckling only. The influence of cor-
ner radius on distortional buckling is not a well-studied prob-
lem. More study is clearly needed to assess the influence of
corner radius in the post-buckling range, regardless of the
buckling mode. This discusser looks forward to the future
research on postbuckling that Professor Marsh mentions in
his conclusion.
APPENDIX. REFERENCES
AISI. (1996). Specification for the design of cold-formed steel structural
members. American Iron and Steel Institute, Washington, D.C.
BCCS. (1992). "Part 1.3 Cold-formed thin gauge members and sheet-
ings." Eurocode 3 design of steel structures, BCCS.
Schafer, B. W. (1997). "Cold-formed steel behavior and design: Analyt-
ical and numerical modeling of elements and members with longitu-
J. Struct. Eng. 1998.124:1498-1499.
dinal stiffeners," PhD dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, New
York.
Veroci, B. (1990). "On the basic width of profiled sheet compression
plates." Proc., Stability of Steel Struct., Budapest, Hungary.
There are many aspects of local buckling which involve a
choice of the use of "flat width" versus the true distance be-
tween the intersection of the adjoining median lines, and the
discusser, B. J. Schafer, has clearly illustrated one of them.
The writer's position is simply that, for the radii commonly
1.5 used in cold formed shapes, it is unconservative to use the
"flat width" for the elastic buckling stress, but it is also shown
that, for very large radii, the "flat width" may give a conser-
vative value.
The discusser's model of a flange, with a simply support at
the weblflange junction, neglecting the restraint provided by
the web, degenerates to a torsional buckling problem for which
there is no distortion of the cross section. All local buckling
involves distortion of the cross section, and those forms of
local buckling for which the term "distortional" is used as a
matter of choice. The flange as illustrated in Fig. 6 will fail in
torsion at a lower stress than that which would cause a true
"local" buckle, although the rotated flange would give the
appearance of what is often called "distortional" buckling.
The influence of the lip on this torsional mode is best treated
by considering the warping constant for the shape, and the
true length of the "flange" becomes a factor, as the buckling
is no longer "locaL"
Restraint by the web has a greater influence on the buckling
stress for the flange than does the radius of the corner bends,
and only by considering this restraint can a "local" mode of
buckling occur.
The discusser reminds us that there is important evidence
that the use of the "flat width" leads to values closer to the
test results for the ultimate strength than does the use of the
true width. This has been confirmed in our continuing study
of the postbuckling strength of box sections with corner radii,
for radii of a practical size. The results of this study are shortly
to be published (Marsh and Arash, unpublished material).
NONLINEAR ELASTIC BEHAVIOR OF
I-BEAMS CURVED IN PLANa
Discussion by V. K. Verma3
Eqs. 30-33 are an improvement over the equations given
by others and quoted by the authors, because these are appli-
cable to large rotation. Others, like Kang and Yoo (1994), Ra-
jasekaran and Padmanabhan (1989), and Yang and Kuo (1986,
'Prof. Emeritus, Ctr. for Bldg. Studies, Concordia Univ., 1455 de Mai-
sonneuve Blvd., Montreal, PQ H3Y 309, Canada.
'September 1997, Vol. 123, No.9, by Yong-Lin Pi and N. S. Trahair
(Paper 14708).
'Mgr. (Civil), Nat. Hydroelectric Power Corp., Ltd., Sector 33, Fari-
dabad·121003, India.
JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / DECEMBER 1998/1499