ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a computer method of analysing flexural-torsional buckling which is capable of very high accuracy, and which can be applied to a very wide range of structures. It discusses the application of the finite element method to elastic buckling problems. The chapter explains the flexural-torsional buckling of columns and the flexural-torsional buckling of monosymmetric beam-columns. It also discusses the part of the nodal deformation transformations, the effects of the boundary conditions are allowed for by eliminating the rows and columns of the global stiffness and stability matrices corresponding to the zero nodal buckling deformations. The chapter also explains the boundary conditions for the flexural-torsional buckling of columns, including off-axis boundary conditions. It explores an alternative method of increasing the accuracy to that of increasing the number of elements is to use higher order elements, based on quintic or even higher order polynomials, than the cubics.
