Lateral buckling of reinforced concrete beams without lateral support

Reinforced concrete beams possess variable flexural and torsional stiffnesses due to formation of cracks in the tension area along the beam. Zn order to check the stability of the beam, it is thus more appropriate to divide the beam into a finite number of segments for which mean stiffnesses and also bending moments are calculated. The stability analysis is further simplified, by using these mean values for each segment. In this paper, an algorithm for calculating the critical lateral buckling slenderness ratio for a definite load level, in a reinforced concrete beam without lateral support at the flanges, is presented. By using this ratio, the lateral buckling safety level of a slender beam may be checked or estimated.