Flexural Elastic Buckling Stress of Batten Type Light Gauge Built-Up Member

In Japan, built-up member composed with light gauge is used for studs of shear wall. Flexural buckling stress of built-up compression member is evaluated by effective slenderness ratio. The effective slenderness ratio of light gauge built-up compression member is proposed for heavy sections; however, it is not verified that it can be adopted in light gauge. In this paper, full scale testing of light gauge built-up members are conducted. From the test results, it is shown that current Standard overestimates the buckling strength. Based on energy equilibrium theory, modified effective slenderness ratio for light gauge built-up member is derived. The validity of the modified effective slenderness ratio is shown with test results.