Example Description

This example uses a cantilever column to test in-plane buckling of shell elements. The column is 100 inches tall, 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick. Only the Ux, Uz and Ry degrees of freedom are active in the model, thus preventing the column from buckling out-of-plane. A unit concentrated vertical downward load, P, is applied to the top of the column. The buckling load, Pcr, calculated by this model is compared with an independent hand calculated results.

The column is meshed into 2x12 elements. The unit load P is split with one-quarter of the load applied to joints 37 and 39 and one-half of the load applied to joint 38.
Joint 1 has a pinned support and joints 2 and 3 are on rollers. The rollers are used to avoid imposing a local Poisson’s effect that is not included in the hand calculated result.

Tested Features

Buckling analysis of shells
Joint force loads
Active degrees of freedom