Dr. T. M. Roberts (M)
(School of Engineering, University of Wales College of Cardiff)
Professor Dougherty has presented an interesting paper on the flexural-torsional buckling of doubly symmetric, laterally unrestrained beams subjected to combined uniformly distributed and concentrated gravity loading. However, the validity of the results presented is questionable, due to the neglect of a number of important parameters, such as the warping rigidity of the section, the height of load application above the shear centre, and, to a lesser extent, the influence of prebuckling displacements.