In accordance with DIN 18800, Part 2, the designs are carried out separately for flexural buckling and lateral-torsional buckling to simplify the calculation. Generally, the flexural buckling design is performed in the framework plane using the stress analysis of the planar structure according to the second-order analysis, considering design loads and pre-deformations.
The lateral-torsional buckling design is performed on an individual member detached from the entire structure by using defined boundary conditions and loads in accordance with the elastic-elastic method.
RF-/FE-LTB searches for the governing failure mode by means of the critical load factor which describes flexural, torsional, and lateral-torsional buckling, or the combination of all failure modes, depending on the model and load applied. Then, the module performs recalculation to obtain the required operands.
Detail settings control whether the critical load factor is calculated due to loss of stability (providing the material is defined by infinitely elastic properties), or with stress limitation.
If necessary, you can adjust the size of the finite elements. You can also modify the partial safety factor γM. In RF-/FE-LTB, iteration parameters are preset appropriately to calculate all common models, but can be adjusted individually.