Buckling analysis of closed and reticular cross-section thin-walled members via finite strip-riccati transfer matrix method

Nowadays, thin-walled components have been applied in modern engineering structures widely, of which buckling behavior is of great significant for structural research and study. In this article, Riccati transfer matrix method (Riccati TMM) for closed-loop system is introduced in semi-analytical finite strip method (SA-FSM) to analyze the buckling problem of closed-loop member. And the buckling analysis of reticular cross-section thin-walled member with closed loops is conducted by finite strip-Riccati transfer matrix method (Riccati FSTMM), which is developed based on Riccati TMM for multi-body system with closed-loops and SA-FSM. The Riccati FSTMM has a compelling advantage over SA-FSM in computational efficiency because it avoids the global stiffness matrix. In order to verify the efficiency of the proposed methods, several numerical examples with different cross-section are analysed by Riccati FSTMM and the results are compared with the ones by the computation software CUFSM. All results confirm that Riccati FSTMM for buckling analysis of closed and reticular cross-section thin-walled members is reliable and efficient.