ABSTRACT
This paper presents a generic approach to the problem of a thin-walled square tube with an elastic infill, whose stiffness varies between zero (at which the local buckling coefficient is 4.0) and unity (at which the local buckling coefficient is determined to be 9.2). It makes use of a simple Rayleigh-Ritz energy approach with modified Fourier series modelling the buckling displacements, and arrives at the variation of the local buckling coefficient as a function of the stiffness of the infill. The motivation for the work is to derive an economic system on the basis of strength to weight ratio for maximising the local buckling coefficient, which may be needed in aerospace, biomedical and other weight-sensitive engineering applications.
