Elastic and plastic resistance of thin walled HVH sections

In the present paper a program THINWALLRES is explained to obtain the elastic and plastic resistance of thin walled HVH sections under many combinations of the internal forces: axial force N, shear forces Vz and Vy, bending moments My and Mz, bimoment B, warping torsional moment Tw (= Mxw) and Saint Venant torsional moment Tt (= Mxs). The program THINWALLRES can at the moment solve various HVH-sections (H – Horizontal upper flange, V – Vertical web, H – Horizontal bottom flange), i.e. I-sections and H-sections that can be monosymmetrical, channel sections and Z-sections. The background of the theory is briefly explained. The results provided by the program are the elastic normal stresses, shear stresses and von Mises stresses due to any combinations of eight internal forces. The plastic stress distribution under given internal forces, plastic factor and up to ten different interaction diagrams combinations may be obtained with THINWALLRES. The results in the form of diagrams are helpful in the safe and economic design of metal (steel and aluminium) thinwalled members of the Classes 1, 2 and 3.