ABSTRACT
Complex structures, consisting of various elements, may lose their stability, as a rule, in several ways: one of their elements may buckle (local buckling), or the whole structure may lose its stability (global buckling). These two modes of buckling interact in such a way that, on the one hand, the buckling of one of the elements reduces the stiffness of the whole structure (since this consists of the 'sum' of the rigidities of the elements). On the other hand, due to the buckling deformation of the whole structure, some elements undergo overloading, so that these will buckle under a lower load intensity than as parts of the undeformed structure.
