LATERALLY SUPPORTED BEAMS

A beam with such supports along the span can be considered a laterally supported beam and the effective span
for LTB is reduced as the length between these supports. (https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-laterally-supported-
beam)

The examples here are good but not perfect. Like for example, I take issue with Mr. Himanshu Mishra 's example
saying that a beam supporting a slab is inherently laterally supported. Consider a slab resting on the top flange
of a hot rolled steel beam. Under gravity condition, this can be considered as a continuously laterally supported
beam (under certain conditions, there doesn't need to be a mechanical connection as well). But when you're
analyzing for wind loading, the uplift reverses the nature of stress in the flanges and then the flange supporting
the slab is no longer in compression and therefore the beam is not laterally supported any more. This exclusion
has led to several roof collapses of industrial structures and that is something even the code recognizes.

Due to the beams top flange beam supported by the concrete floor it is actually continuously restrained along its
length, meaning that the section capacity is approximately equal to the member capacity, let us say 200kNm. So
the beam is fine. In this case the slab which is cast on the beam provides the lateral restraint to the beam.

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Alternatively, if the beam was subjected to a -ve moment over 10m length the critical flange becomes the bottom
flange (flange is not restrained over its length) and the member is prone to lateral torsional buckling, hence the
member capacity is reduced due to the member being more slender. this alternatively reduces the capacity of
the member to say 30kNm which is not what we want, but if you increase the size of the beam you only slightly
increase the member capacity or you possibly have a depth constraint by your client (he/she doesn’t want an
600 deep beam over there 10m wide double garage entrance) . This is where designers introduce lateral
restraints which provide torsional restraint to the compression flange, this restraint is typically a compression
restraint as the force is compression and must be transferred back into the slab. Restraints come in all form from
fly braces to struts (beam to beam). Below are some examples

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LATERALLY UNSUPPORTED BEAMS

Any beam experiencing bending along major axis and when the compression flange is not restrained from
buckling, such beams are laterally unsupported. These beams can tilt along the y axis. The effect usually seen
as lateral torsional bucking in plate girders.

Cellular and Castellated Beams

A beam style where an I-beam is subjected to a longitudinal cut along its web following a specific pattern in order
to divide it and reassemble the beam with a deeper web by taking advantage of the cutting pattern.

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The primary advantage of castellated beam is the improved strength due to the increased depth of the section
without any additional weight. However, one consequence of the increased depth of the section is the
development of stability problem during erection.

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