A Graphical Design Aid for Selecting Standard W-Shape Steel Beam-Columns with Minimum Weight

This paper presents an alternative technique for selecting the lightest W-section for beam-column members. Following the AISC procedure, the number of required steps to find a feasible section highly depends on the initial trial section. A new graphical technique based on the AISC interaction formula for designing steel beam-columns is proposed. By employing the newly developed diagrams, the new approach quickly leads to the lightest feasible section for a member subjected to combined biaxial bending and axial force. The number of computational steps in the proposed method is slightly reduced from the current AISC procedure. Some advantages of the new proposed method are converging to the solution in fewer steps, imposing no limit on Lb, considering the effect of Cb, considering biaxial bending by simply using a modification factor and covering cases where Lb is not equal to KL.