ABSTRACT
And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, The poet’s pen turns them to shapes And gives to airy nothingness a local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Compression members are widely used in machinery of all types. A column is a slender compression member that deforms laterally, or buckles, before stresses reach the yield strength of the material. In buckling, loads below a critical value can be supported, but once the critical load is exceeded, large deformations result. This chapter begins with a discussion of equilibrium regimes, in order to introduce nomenclature and concepts relevant to buckling. The classic derivation of Euler is then applied to elastically deforming columns, and so-called Euler buckling is described. For less slender columns, Johnson’s buckling criterion is better suited to predict buckling loads. The American Institute of Steel Construction requirements and design methodology for compression members are then described and demonstrated. Finally, eccentric columns are investigated, where the applied load does not act through the column’s centroid.
