Determination of buckling loads for wooden beams using the elastic models

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental analysis of buckling load of the square wooden beams. The buckling tests were conducted on the wooden beams with three different lengths, and the critical buckling load was determined on the basis of the measured relation between the axial displacement and axial load. Analytical solutions for the critical buckling load of the beams were derived using the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory and Timoshenko beam theory. When deriving the models, both small and large deformation theories were considered. Moreover, the effect of a grain orientation was included in the models. The results show that the selected solution was in agreement with the values measured from the experiment. The paper provides a review of mathematical models and gives us a comparison between the theories and experiments with subsequent recommendations for practice.