ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with obtaining closed-form solutions for inhomogeneous columns under various load conditions and boundary conditions. Among others, Engesser’s (1893) and Duncan’s (1937) closed-form solutions are generalized to a wide class of problems, including the generalized Euler problem, that of a column under its own weight, or under polynomially varying distributed axial loading. In these problems we postulate the buckling mode as the fourth-order polynomial.
