• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.597-606
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• 2006

Since FRP materials have various advantages over steel, many research activities to use them for the civil engineering applications are now in progress. The present paper deals with the local buckling behavior of FRP pultruded members as a first step toward the development of design criteria. In the design of compression members, it is very important to know not only if local buckling occurs or not but also which plate component governs local buckling, but it is not easy to perform this work in a rigorous manner. In the present paper, a simple and accurate equation which can compute the coefficients of buckling of orthotropic plates and local buckling of pultruded compression members is suggested by performing rigorous analysis, energy analysis, and parametric study. The local buckling strength and the plate component governing the local buckling behavior of thin-walled pultruded compression members can be easily determined by using the proposed equation.