AN ASYMPTOTIC LOWER-BOUND DYNAMIC BUCKLING ESTIMATE FOR IMPERFECT SYSTEMS UNDER IMPACT LOADING

A regular perturbation procedure is presented for the determination of lower bound dynamic buckling loads of discrete dissipative or nondiss ipative imperfect structural systems under impact loading. The procedu re is based on the energy criterion for establishing the lower bound d ynamic buckling estimate of autonomous systems without solving a set o f differential equations of motion numerically presented by Kounadis a nd his associates. Attention is focused on the effect of imperfections on the lower bound estimate. As an expansion in terms of fractional p owers of imperfection amplitude, the lower bound dynamic load is const ructed by using an inverse expansion of the aforementioned procedure. Application of the procedure is demonstrated by two examples. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.