Pinned-Pinned Slender Solid Struts with Parabolic Taper

Abstract

In 1917–19, Barling and Webb, Berry, Cowley and Levy, and Webb and Lang discussed the elastic stability of struts of various tapers, but it appears to have escaped notice that one of the few cases in which formal integration is possible is that in which the tapered profile of axial longitudinal sections is part of a parabola; this gives a “ homogeneous linear “ differential equation, i.e., a linear equation of the form f (xd/dx) y = F (x).