The necessity to save steel leads to a marked tendency towards thin-walled structures. Such structures are made of thin plating, the behaviour - and, of course, design - of which is very significantly affected by stability phenomena. In fact, with up-to-date thin-walled steel plated structures, it is very frequently the point of view of stability that governs the design. So it is not astonishing that the attention of a great number of research teams in various parts of the world has been for a good many years directed to investigations into numerous aspects of the buckling behaviour of steel...