Lateral buckling of beams with shear deformations – A hyperelastic formulation

The equilibrium and buckling equations are derived for the lateral buckling of a prismatic straight beam. A consistent finite strain constitutive law is used, which is based on a hyperelastic model for an isotropic material. The kinematics of the cross-sectional deformations are based on a Timoshenko type beam displacement of the cross-sectional plane using Euler angles and two shear finite rotations coupled with warping taken normal to the displaced plane. Also derived are the second order approximations to the displacements, curvatures, twist and internal actions. The constitutive relationships for the internal actions reveal new coupling terms between the bending moments, torsion and bimoment, which are functions of the cross-sectional warping and shear deformations. New Wagner type nonlinear torsion terms are derived which are functions of the warping of the cross-sectional plane, and are coupled to the twisting and shear deformations of the cross-section. Solutions are determined for the lateral buckling of a prismatic monosymmetric beam under pure bending and the flexural–torsional buckling under axial compression. For the flexural–torsional buckling problem it is found that the Euler type column buckling formula is consistent with Haringx’s column buckling formula while the torsional buckling formula is different to conventional equations. The second variation of the total potential is also derived. The effects of shear deformations are explored by examining the non-dimensional lateral buckling equation for a simply supported beam.