In this paper, one investigates the local-plate, distortional and global buckling behavior of thin-walled steel beams subjected to non-uniform bending moment diagrams, i.e. under the presence of longitudinal stress gradients. One begins by deriving a novel formulation based on Generalized Beam Theory (GBT), which (i) can handle beams with arbitrary open cross-sections and (ii) incorporates all the effects stemming from the presence of longitudinally varying stress distributions. This formulation is numerically implemented by means of the finite element method: one (i) develops a GBT-based beam finite element, which accounts for the stiffness reduction associated to applied longitudinal stresses with linear, quadratic and cubic variation, as well as to the ensuing shear stresses, and (ii) addresses the derivation of the equilibrium equation system that needs to be solved in the context of a GBT buckling analysis. Then, in order to illustrate the application and capabilities of the proposed GBT-based formulation and finite element implementation, one presents and discusses numerical results concerning (i) rectangular plates under longitudinally varying stresses and pure shear, (ii) I-section cantilevers subjected to uniform major axis bending, tip point loads and uniformly distributed loads, and (iii) simply supported lipped channel beams subjected to uniform major axis bending, mid-span point loads and uniformly distributed loads — by taking full advantage of the GBT modal nature, one is able to acquire an in-depth understanding on the influence of the longitudinal stress gradients and shear stresses on the beam local and global buckling behavior. For validation purposes, the GBT results are compared with values either (i) yielded by shell finite element analyses, performed in the code ANSYS, or (ii) reported in the literature. Finally, the computational efficiency of the proposed GBT-based beam finite element is briefly assessed.
