Experimental evaluation of elastic critical load in batten columns

A test program was devised for batten columns subjected to pure axial compression to determine the elastic critical load. Tests were conducted using specimens with various batten plate dimensions and also, various distance between two longitudinal chords. For obtaining the elastic critical load from the test results, modified Southwell plot was used. The resulted critical loads were compared with those obtained from the three existing theoretical methods of the equivalent slenderness, Paul approach and finally the SSRC method. It is found that the theoretical methods are generally conservative. The Paul approach is the most accurate method and the equivalent slenderness method using the Engesser equation gives the results with the least accuracy. The accuracy of the SSRC method is slightly less than the Paul method.