Column Design (Part 1)
A column in the definition of mechanical engineering does not have to be in vertical. The column is a structural member that carries an axial compressive load , and that tends to fail by elastic instability or buckling rather than by crushing the material. Buckling or elastic instability is the the failure condition in which the shape of the column is not sufficient enough to hold it straight under a xial compressive load . At the point of buckling, a radical deflection of the axis of the column occurs suddenly. Then if the load is not reduced, the column will collapse. It's obviously that this kind of failure must be avoided in our machine elements design. Columns that tends to buckle are ideally straight and relatively long and slender . If a compression member is so short, the normal failure analysis must be used rather than the method that we're going to discuss in this post. How will we know when a member is long and slender? The tendency for a column to buckl