Stability analysis of planar equilibrium configurations of elastic rods subjected to end loads (Q968089)

The authors propose a semi-analytic method for the investigation of stability of equilibrium states of a rod under various boundary conditions using exact elastica solutions expressed in terms of Jacobi elliptic functions. The stability is examined by studying the sign of the second variation of the strain energy functional subject to isoperimetric constraints. To this end, the second variation is written as a diagonal quadratic form by using the eigensolutions of an auxiliary Sturm-Liouville problem. The stability analysis reduces to the question whether a certain interval, which is here called a unit interval, contains eigenvalues. The approach originally proposed for a straight rod with hinged ends [\textit{V. V. Kuznetsov} and \textit{S. V. Levyakov}, Int. J. Non-Linear Mech. 37, No. 6, 1003--1009 (2002; Zbl 1346.74103)] is generalized here to a rod of constant initial curvature under various loading and boundary conditions. The novel feature of the algorithm is that isoperimetric constraints can be taken into account.