Dynamic buckling of a simple elastic-plastic model under pulse loading

Abstract The dynamic buckling of an elastic-plastic imperfection-sensitive model subjected to rectangular- and triangular-shaped loading pulses is examined to provide some insight into the dynamic buckling behaviour of structures. The loading pulse is expressed as a function of the horizontal displacement, which allows an analytical method to be used for determining the stability domains for both pulses. The estimates obtained are compared with some previously published results on the dynamic elastic-plastic buckling of the same model under a step loading. It transpires that for the pulse loading of models with large imperfections dynamic instability occurs either elastically or plastically depending on the pulse duration, while for a step loading only an elastic instability is possible for the parameters examined.