Buckling of Steel Angle and Tee Struts

An experimental study was conducted on steel angle and tee struts to provide verification of the theoretical solutions for flexural, torsional-flexural, and plate buckling. The effect of slenderness and width-thickness ratios was examined for single angle struts and double angle struts with separators, with hinged and fixed end conditions. The slenderness ratio was varied from approximately 21 to 89 and the overall width-thickness ratios ranged from 10.0 to 17.3. Tests on 27 tee sections with hinged ends were also conducted. Good agreement is shown between the experimental and theoretical results. It is suggested that the flexural, torsional-flexural and plate buckling stresses be computed as per the established rational buckling theory and the least value be taken as the critical stress for the given strut.