Static stability analysis of global buckling and critical load ratio calculation are among the fundamental and most important parameters for structural analysis and design in numerous engineering applications across various fields. Particularly in the field of structural engineering, the critical load ratio is a parameter that determines the overall performance of tall buildings; however, due to the complexity of coupled differential equations with variable coefficients associated with different classical continuous models, its analysis has not been widespread, and only specific cases have been solved. This article utilizes the classic sandwich beam, widely studied in the literature, to propose an analytical solution and a generalized numerical solution to address the elastic buckling problem with applications in tall building stability analysis. The analytical solutions are applicable to uniform structures and consider point, uniform, and variable compression loads along their length that can be expressed through polynomial functions. The generalized numerical solution addresses the general case of structures with uniform or variable properties. Numerical applications and parametric analyses show excellent agreement between the results of the proposed methods and those of one-dimensional finite element methods. The influences of key parameters on the behavior of the eigenvalue associated with global buckling analysis are analyzed, and graphs and tables are proposed for direct practical application by engineers. Due to their mathematical formulation and excellent precision in results, the proposed methods can be safely used in the preliminary and final analysis of tall buildings and can be easily adapted to other engineering fields.
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