A lateral-torsional buckling demonstration model using 3D printing

It is well-established that beams of relatively narrow cross-section have a tendency to buckle laterally when loaded. This type of lateral-torsional instability, which has considerable practical importance in a variety of thin-walled structures, is a classical buckling situation in which the critical load is related, among other things, to characteristic features of the cross-section. In this short paper, 3D-printing is exploited to provide a parametric study based on a fixed cantilever geometry in which a number of standard cross-sectional forms are compared in terms of their effect on this kind of buckling behavior.

Automated summary

It is well-established that narrow beams can buckle laterally when loaded. This study utilizes 3D-printing to compare the effects of different cross-sectional forms on this type of buckling behavior in a fixed cantilever geometry.