Abstract: The composite thin-walled beams are widely used in industry because of their good mechanical properties. In this paper, the research work for the composite thin-walled beams about nonlinear beam theory and analysis of the beam cross-section characteristics are surveyed. Dealing with warping displacement,the composite thin-walled work can be divided into six classes: (1) free warping model;(2) one-order warping theory; (3) high-order warping theory;(4) axial warping distribution model; (5) eigen-warping model; (6) the other models. With respect to the mechanical characteristics of the composite thin-walled beams, the recent progresses including the authors' work which considers the laminate warping effect for composite thin-walled beams are introduced.