The elastic lateral-torsional buckling of rectangular section beams made of wood under various loading conditions are investigated in this paper. Three dimensional finite element models considering the orthotropic behavior of wood are utilized to predict the elastic buckling load. The effects of depth/width ratios of the cross section, wood species, and cross grain of the beams on the predicted buckling loads are investigated. For all the cases considered, the critical loads predicted using finite element models assuming wood as orthotropic material are much smaller than those predicted assuming wood as isotropic material. The predicted critical loads of beams with cross grain of 45° are approximately a third of the predicted critical loads of beams without any cross grain. The finite element results agree very well with the beam tests on several species of the hardwood category.
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