General Analysis of Laterally Loaded Beam-Columns

An efficient computational method for predicting the moment variation along inelastic compression members is extended to deal with more general loading cases of laterally-loaded steel beam columns. In order to facilitate the analysis of such beam columns, it is necessary to develop one important feature which is a property of moment diagrams for compression members. It is shown that continuous moment diagrams exhibit symmetry about their maximums whether or not the maximums occur at the center of the column. Knowledge of this characteristic not only provides a systematic way for developing moment diagrams, but also increases the scope for their applications.