COMSOL Verification and Validation Models

For slender structures, buckling can be a catastrophic instability if the service load exceeds the critical buckling load. For such structures, it can be important to study the structural behavior beyond the critical buckling load. Such a study is known as a postbuckling analysis. Tracing the equilibrium path in a postbuckling analysis can be challenging because of numerical difficulties associated with, for example, limit points. The arc-length method is a well-known strategy for tracing equilibrium paths in such situations.

In this example, an incremental arc-length method combined with cubic extrapolation is used to perform a postbuckling analysis of a hinged cylindrical panel under a central point load. The results are compared with those from a similar example that uses a global equation approach based on a monotonically increasing average displacement.