Structural elements with open and thin-walled section are widely used in metal structures. These elements have, in general, low torsional stiffness. For monosymmetric and asymmetric sections, when the shear center does not coincide with the center of gravity coupling between bending and torsion may occur. Due to the low torsional stiffness, large twist beam cross sections may arise. Thus, an analysis of the behavior of such structural elements, taking into account the geometric nonlinearity, is desirable. For this purpose, partial differential equations describing the flexural-flexural-torsional coupling are used in conjunction with the Galerkin method to obtain a set of discretized equations of motion, which is solved by the Runge-Kutta method. From the linearized equations, we obtain the natural frequencies, axial critical loads, and the axial load and frequency relationship for beams with different boundary conditions. Next, we study the nonlinear oscillations and bifurcations of a clamped-free beam subjected to harmonic lateral loads. A detailed parametric analysis, using various nonlinear dynamics tools, investigates the nonlinear dynamic behavior and nonplanar motions of the beam for the first three regions of resonance and the influence of the non-linearity, loading position, torsional restraints and load control parameters on the dynamic stability of the structure.