Buckling and Postbuckling of a

C.Y.Wang Long-Hanging Elastic Column Due

Departments of Mathematics
and Mechanical Engineering,
Michigan State University,
East Lansing, Mich. 48824
to a Bottom Load
v4 long heavy elastic column is supported at the top end. The bottom end is sub-
jected to a compressive force. The critical buckling loads, related to zeroes of Airy
functions, are quite different from the Euler buckling loads. Postbuckling shapes
are integrated numerically.

1 Introduction
The stability of a weightless column under compressive To simplify the present work, we shall consider a pinned top
loads was studied by Euler [1]. If the column is pinned at both end such that the column differs from the vertical only in the
ends, the buckling loads are n2ir2EI/L2 where n is an integer, bottom region, where buckling may occur. In this particular
EI is the rigidity, and L is the length of the column. The case the top region would be absent.
problem of a heavy vertical column, bottom end fixed and top The present work may be applied to deep sea drilling from a
end free, was studied by GreenhiU [2] who found the critical platform and also to heavy curtains or drapes. In these cases
density or height of a uniformly weighted column. The the assumption equation (1) is well satisfied.
combined effect of column density and end load was con-
sidered by Grishcoff [3] and extended recently by Wang and 2 Formulation
Drachman [4] to cases where a finite column is hanging from
a foundation. Figure 1(b) shows the origin of a cartesian coordinate
In this paper we shall study the long-hanging column. The system (x' ,y') is situated at the bottom end. A local balance
column is secured at the top which supports all of its weight. of moment (Fig. 1(c)) gives
We are interested at the response of the column when a dm d2e
(F' —ps')sin 6 = ••-EI- (2)
compressive load is added to the bottom (free) end. Hsr ~ds72
We assume the column length L is much greater than the
"bending length" (EI/p)xn, where p is the weight per length. Here F' is the force applied at the bottom end, s' is the arc
In fact, we assume length from that end, 6 is the local angle of inclination, and m
is the local moment. Using the following normalizations
Z,/(£7/p)1/3-oo (1)
There are three characteristics of this /ong-hanging column:
top
1. Conditions at the top end (forces and moments applied region £P
r*
at the top end) does not effect the bottom region.
2. There exists a long stretch of midregion which is
almost vertical. mid
region (V
m-fdm/
3. The bottom region can move freely as a whole
laterally, i.e., it does not admit horizontal forces.
Figure 1(a) shows the three regions, which may be considered

i-!
independent of each other when the column is long enough. bottom T
region |_ F-fs'
Contributed by the Applied Mechanics Division for presentation at the 1983
ASME Applied Mechanics, Bioengineering, and Fluids Engineering Con-
ference, Houston, Texas, June 20-22, 1983 of THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF
MECHANICAL ENGINEERS.
Discussion on this paper should be addressed to the Editorial Department,
ASME, United Engineering Center, 345 East 47th Street, New York, N.Y.
10017, and will be accepted until two months after final publication of the (a) (b) (c)
paper itself in the JOURNAL OF APPLIED MECHANICS. Manuscript received by
ASME Applied Mechanics Division, June 1982; final revision, October, 1982. Fig. 1 (a) The three independent regions of a long-hanging column; (b)
Paper No. 83-APM-22. the coordinate system situated at the bottom end; and (c) local moment
Copies will be available until February, 1984. balance of an arbitrary small segment

Journal of Applied Mechanics J U N E 1983, V o l . 5 0 / 3 1 1

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 ln
F=F'(EI) -1/3.-2/3
, c _
s=s'(p/EI) , x=x'(p/EI)w\ dA,
'-(-F)=Q (12)
y=y'(P/EI) in
(3) ~dr
Equation (2) becomes The roots of equation (12) are F = 1.018793, 3.248198,
4.820099, 6.163307, 7.372177, etc. [5]. Thus the smallest
d2e (critical) buckling load below which the column is stable, is
(4)
ds2 + (F-s)sm8 = 0
F ' = 1.018793 ( £ 7 ) 1 / V / 3 (13)
The boundary conditions are that the bottom end is free to
The other roots correspond to higher modes of buckling.
rotate.
These buckling loads are entirely different from the Euler
dd loads n2 ir2EI/L2. The linear buckling of a long heavy column
(0) = 0 (5)
~ds~ was first considered by Willers [6] who, using infinite series,
and that the column becomes vertical at large distances obtained the value of F = 1.0188 for the lowest mode.
0(oo)-0 (6) 4 Numerical Integration of Postbuckling Shapes
The actual configuration of the column can be found by For finite deflections, equations (3)-(6) do not admit
dx dv analytic solutions. Numerical integration is required to obtain
= cos 8, — = sin 6, x(0) = y(0) = 0 (7) the postbuckling characteristics. Such a two-point boundary
ds ds value problem may be obtained in principle, for given F, by
guessing 0(0), integrate to large values of s, and see if 6 decays
to zero. This scheme, however, is highly inaccurate due to the
3 Stability
oscillatory nature of 8 for s < F. We find the following
The buckling loads are found by linearizing equation (4) modified method is much better.
d26 Rewrite equation (4) as
+ (F-s)d = 0 (8) d26
ds2 -rr=rsmd (14)
Let 5—F=r. The problem becomes dr
d26 pick any 8\r=0' guess dd/dr\r=0 and integrate equation (14)
-rd = 0 (9) as an initial value problem to large r (r = 5 was found to be
dr2 sufficient), and see if 8 decays to zero. This one parameter
shooting is much more accurate since equation (14) is
dd
— (-F)=0, 0(oo)=O (10) nonoscillatory for r > 0. Then using the correct values 6 and
dr dd/dr at r = 0, we integrate equation (14) backward until
The general solution to equation (9) is composed of the Airy dd/dr first becomes zero, say at r = r*. Then
functions F=-r*>0, 6\s=0 = d\r=r* (15)
8= C,Ai{r)+C1Bi(r) (11) Using equations (4), (5), (7), and (15) the postbuckling
The boundary conditions dictate C2 = 0 and for a nontrivial configurations for the primary mode can be found. For the
solution higher buckling modes one can integrate to the second or

1.5

0.5

Fig. 2 Bifurcation of the force-vertical displacement curve. The curves

A ,B,C represent the primary, secondary, and tertiary modes.

312/Vol. 50, JUNE 1983 Transactions of the ASME

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 1 1.5 2
vertical displacement
Fig. 3 The displacements of the bottom end showing the first three
modes

Fig. 5 Postbuckling configurations for the primary mode.

© F = 1.029, (2) F = 1.061, @ F = 1.122.

1 1.5
vertical displacement
Fig. 4 The maximum normalized moment represented by IdWdsl max
for the first three modes

higher zeros of dO/dr. The integration was done by the fourth-

order Runge-Kutta algorithm. The error was adjusted by
varying the step size.

Results and Discussion

Figure 2 shows the force-vertical displacement curve for the
long-hanging column. The vertical displacement is obtained
by the difference between £ and x at large s. We see that the
curves bifurcate from the trivial solution at 1.018793,
3.248198, 4.820099, etc. These branches are the stability
boundaries for the primary, secondary, and tertiary modes,
respectively.
Figure 3 shows the lateral displacement of the bottom end
versus the vertical displacement. The displacements are
normalized with respect to the bending length (EI/p)ui.
The maximum local moment is an important design
criterium. Since the moment is proportional to dd/ds,
equation (14) shows the maximum moment occurs at either s
= For 8 = 0. Since d is never zero for the primary mode, the Fig. 6 Postbuckling configurations for the secondary mode.
maximum moment is at $ = F. For the higher modes the © F = 3.268, (2) F = 3.330, (3) F = 3.445.

Journal of Applied Mechanics JUNE 1983, Vol. 50/313

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 maximum moment is at the first 0 = 0. Figure 4 shows the
maximum moment for the primary mode is considerably
lower than those of the higher modes due to the difference in
the location of maximum I dd/ds I.
The postbuckling configurations for the primary mode are
shown in Fig. 5. The decrease in 6 is monotonic. Figure 6
shows the secondary mode where 6 changes sign once, while
Fig. 7 depicts the tertiary mode. Elastic columns that buckle
in higher modes have higher potential energy and therefore
thay are less stable than those in the primary mode. However,
similar to the higher modes of the Euler column, they do
occur in laterally restrained cases.
One may mention that it is possible to do a similar analysis
for a clamped bottom end. The normalized buckling loads are
2.338107, 4.087949, 5.520560, etc. Unlike the Euler column,
the higher buckling loads in both pinned and clamped cases
are not simple multiples of the lowest buckling load.
Our present results also differ substantially from the short-
hanging column [4] which is essentially dominated by the
stiffness. For the short column the buckling is highly sensitive
to conditions at the top end while in the present case the two
end regions are independent. Our numerical results show
disturbances at the bottom end are limited to a region of less
than 10 bending lengths from the bottom.

References
1 Euler, L., De Curvis Elastics, 1744.
2 Greenhill, A. G., "Determination of the Greatest Height Consistent With
Stability That a Vertical Pole or Mast Can be Made, and of the Greatest Height
to Which a Tree of Given Proportions Can Grow," Camb. Phil. Soc. Proc,
Vol. 4, 1881, pp. 65-73.
3 Grishcoff, N., in Theory of Elastic Stability, Timoshenko, S. P., and Gere,
J. M., eds., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961, p. 104.
4 Wang, C. Y., and Drachman, B., "Stability of a Heavy Column With an
End L o a d , " ASME JOURNAL OF APPLIED MECHANICS, Vol. 48, 1981, pp.
668-669.
5 Abramowitz, M., and Stegun, I. A., eds., Handbook of Mathematical
Functions, Dover, New York, 1965, p. 478.
6 Willers, F. A., "Das Knicken Schwerer Gestange," Z. angew Math.
Mech., Vol. 21, 1941, pp. 43-51.

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