2E4: SOLIDS & STRUCTURES

Lecture 15
Dr. Bidisha Ghosh
Notes:
http://www.tcd.ie/civileng/Staff/Bidisha.Ghosh/Solid
s & Structures

Buckling of Columns
What is buckling?
Buckling is a large deformation produced under compressive load in a
direction or plane normal to the direction of application of the load.
Buckling is a form of instability, it occurs suddenly with large changes

in deformation but little change in loading. For this reason it is a

dangerous phenomenon that must be avoided in structural design.
Buckling is not failure through yielding. Due to the shape of a

structural element it can buckle under a load below the ultimate

strength.

Whether a column will buckle or not depends on the

length of the column.

Long Columns

Long columns usually fail by elastic buckling.

The failure load is below ultimate strength of the

material.

The Euler formula is used to calculate failure strength in

long columns.

Short Columns

Short columns generally dont fail by elastic buckling.

The failure stress is close to yield stress of the material.

The true short-columns do not have much practical

application.

How do we know which is a short/long column?

= Le r

r=

I
A

Classification of Columns

CD is Euler curve showing behaviour of long columns

Euler formula should not be used for slenderness ratio <120
For slenderness ratio less than 30, columns are called short columns.
They fail by yielding or crushing, generally not buckling.

End Conditions

What was the pinned-pinned condition mentioned in connection

with Slenderness ratio?

Euler derived all formulae related to column buckling for pinnedpinned condition and later for other end support conditions, those
formula were altered by using a constant, C
Instead of the actual length of the columns a new length termed as the
effective length was used.

Effective length, L2e =

L2
C

Different EndEnd-Conditions

Check the load required to buckle!

Failure Stress

Pcr =

2 EI
Le 2

cr =

Pcr 2 E
= 2
A

CrossCross-sectional Shape & Buckling

The radius of gyration provides a measure of the resistance provided
by a cross-section to lateral buckling.
The radius of gyration is not a physical entity in itself. It is a
relationship derived to make prediction of column behaviour easy. The
radius of gyration is related to the size and shape of the cross-section.

Columns will buckle in the direction of least cross-sectional

stiffness (minimum value of I ).
Buckling Direction

Cross-section
y

P
y

A
h

x
b
Iy>Iz

A rectangular column will buckle in the direction of the smaller

dimension in cross-section. A square column cross-section will be
equally prone to buckling in both x and y directions. This is because the
cross section will offer equal resistance to buckling in the direction x
and y.

Example
Determine the thickness of a round steel tubular strut,
375mm external diameter and 2.5m long, pin-jointed at
the ends, to withstand an axial load of 39000kN.
E=200GPa.

Moment curvature equation

A quick touch on bending before learning buckling!
1.Moment at any section

2.Moment-curvature equation:

M = EI

d2y
dx 2

3.Buckling is an effect of combined compression & bending

Compression on A Slender Column

From knowledge of bending,

d2y
M = EI 2 = Py
dx
d2y
EI 2 + Py = 0
dx
Solve this equation..
1. d 2 y
P
+ 2 y = 0;
where 2 =
2
dx
EI
2. So, y = A sin x + B cos x;
From boundary conditions, B=0 & A sin L = 0

Compression on A Slender Column

A sin L = 0
means, either A = 0 or , sin L = 0
For any buckling to happen the second condition has to be true and
that means,

L = 0, , 2 ,3 .....
P
= n (n = 1, 2,...)
EI
n 2 2 EI
P =
L2
and , L =