Buckling of Thin Walled Beams Under Water Loading

Abstract

An approximate analysis of end supported, thin‐walled prismatic members of open profile section to predict buckling loads under dead weight and water loading is presented. When the critical buckling mode involves considerable torsional component, the water loading may lead to a significant reduction in the buckling load due to the shift of the centroid of the water weight with respect to the undeformed configuration. A finite element displacement model has been adopted to formulate the discrete critical equilibrium equations. Numerical examples show considerable reductions in critical loads for the water loading case.