Influence of pre-buckling displacements on the elastic critical loads of thin walled bars of open cross section (Q760247)

A general instability analysis for thinwalled bars of open cross-section has been presented. The analysis is based on the vanishing of the second variation of the total potential energy. The effects of shear deformation and distortion of cross-section have been excluded. The necessary theory to show the influence of the prebuckling displacement is automatically included in the analysis provided the higher order terms in the displacement derivatives appearing in the energy equation are retained, has been developed. The closed form solutions obtained by the authors agree well with the solutions obtained from governing differential equations. The results for i) simply supported I-beam subjected to uniform bending, ii) flexural-torsional buckling of beam columns, iii) simply supported I-beam subjected to a concentrated load, and iv) beams with initial imperfections, have been derived. The significance of the second order axial strains induced by rotation about the shear centre is indicated by considering the instability of an inverted I-beam subjected to uniform bending. The analysis can be easily incorporated with finite element methods, in case of complex structures and loadings. The geometrical nonlinearity may also be tackled with the aid of numerical methods. The paper is well written and provides some useful results to show the influence of pre-buckling displacements on the critical loads of the thinwalled bars with open cross-section.