One-Way Buckling of a Compressed Strip under Lateral Loading

This paper is concerned with the problem of the buckling of a long thin strip column rigidly supported along its length on one side, and subjected to a uniformly distributed force on the other. It is shown that the mode of buckling failure of the strip column under these conditions is independent of its length and always occurs with the sudden formation of a single buckle. The critical load also is independent of the column length although the post-buckling load is a function of the length. It is evident that the magnitude of the critical load is profoundly influenced by the degree of initial deflection or imperfection present in the column. An analysis of the problem is given together with experimental verification. The effect of the testing machine characteristics is also examined. The particular case of strip column buckling considered here is of vital importance to the solution of a number of plate and shell buckling problems, and sheds new light on these. A further paper on this extension of the theory is in preparation.