Some Non-Conventional Cases of Column Design

Most practical structural engineering papers deal with commonly encountered design problems those likely to be found in conventional building or bridge structures. When engineers encounter uncommon problems, published guides are often lacking in numerical data and a great deal of time can be spent developing analytical solutions. This paper deals with several non-conventional cases of elastic buckling of columns likely to be encountered by structural designers: (1) Symmetrically stepped columns with end axial loads (2) Unsymmetrically stepped columns with end axial loads (3) Prismatic columns with distributed axial loads (4) Prismatic columns with intermediate axial loads (5) Prismatic columns with end and intermediate axial loads (6) Unsymmetrically stepped columns with end and intermediate axial loads.