Buckling of Slanted Columns

A slanted column may represent an inclined member of a truss, a frame, or a meridional element of an axisymmetrically deformable conical shell with rigid edges. Such a structure has a unique constraint condition. A set of nonlinear equations for buckling of elastic slanted columns is derived by the variational method in cooperation with the Lagrange multiplier to deal with the constraint condition. The bifurcation of such columns with simply supported ends is considered along with results obtained from conventional methods. No bifurcation will occur for columns with other end conditions. A set of formulas derived from the linearized eigenvalue method is also presented. The results obtained from the latter are slightly higher than those obtained from the nonlinear theory. The buckling loads may lower further if the change of the inclined angle at the loaded end is taken into consideration during the deformations.