[en] A first part of this paper consists in a review of the different existing methods, allowing to study the behaviour of members for which it is necessary to account for the deformability of the cross section. A particular attention is paid to the capacity of each method to be used for the global analysis of a complete structure. A second part of the paper presents bases for the adaptation of a beam finite element so as to be able to account for the deformability of the profile cross section.