BIAXIAL BENDING

The use of the design aids or the Strain Compatibility Analysis is all well and good if the
bending of the column is uniaxial (i.e. about one principal axis only) however this will
certainly be untrue for common column application. Take for example a conventional
building frame, as you may have imagined, since a column carries girders on both its local x
and y axes then bending will surely manifest on both directions as well upon the action of
the negative moments carried by the girders. Thus we have a biaxial bending setting such
as shown in the figure below:

The problem is that there is no exact solution to solving this kind of situation and so
common practices involve procedures backed up by extensive tests and deemed sufficient
for use such as those developed by Bresler.

Our textbook describes two methods as detailed below:

So the idea is to solve for Mnx and Mny as required by the loads Mux and Muy, these will be
the numerator of the expression 8.18. Mn xo and Mnyo are the design capacity of the column
taking the moment of the other axis equal to zero. Example, to solve for Mn xo we take
Mnyo=0 by utilizing the interaction graph or the strain compatibility analysis for uniaxial
bending and vice versa, these will be the denominators of the expression 8.18. Now to
consider a sufficient design, the sum of the two terms must be less than or equal to 1.0.

α can be taken from the graph of Fig. 8.17.

In the reciprocal load method, the general idea is to solve for Pnxo, Pnyo and Po respectively
assuming there is no bending on the other axis when you solve for bending about the other
axis. Thus, you may use the interaction graphs to solve for P nxo while assuming no bending
about the y axis and Pnyo while assuming no bending about the x axis. Po can be solved using
the same method used in finding either Pnxo and Pnyo but this time we assume that there is
no bending at all.

To understand the theory, let’s look at the following example.

EXAMPLE:
APPENDIX A.5
APPENDIX A.6
APPENDIX A.7

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