ABSTRACT
A column can fail either by crushing or by buckling. Fat, short columns will fail by crushing, slender columns by buckling, and intermediate columns partly by crushing and partly by buckling. The latter failure is complex, but the first two are relatively straightforward. The column will either crush or buckle depending upon whether it is a short or long column. If short, the slenderness ratio will be small and if long, the slenderness ratio will be large. So what is slenderness ratio? It is a measure of the effective slenderness of the column, so: https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> Slenderness ratio = Effective length or height Least lateral dimension https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315843520/3544c4f5-0015-4119-bc52-94292791f8e5/content/uneqn5_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
