Elastic Stability of Heavy Rotating Columns

Abstract

The paper investigates the elastic buckling of heavy rotating columns under an axial load using the Rayleigh-Ritz energy approach. Accurate formulas to predict the buckling capacities of the columns are presented. Moreover, it is shown that this problem is similar to both the stability problem of continuously restrained columns and the free vibration problem of columns due to their similar form of the total energy functional. The formulas obtained can thus be used, with a minor modification, to furnish the solutions to these latter problems. The results for special cases of the formulas are checked and verified by known solutions.