Tensile buckling of a rod with an end moving along a circular guide: Improved experimental investigation based on a dynamic approach

Investigation of buckling under tension is highly important from theoretical and practical viewpoints to ensure safety and the proper performance of mechanical systems. In the present work, tensile buckling is investigated experimentally, and the critical force is measured in systems where one end of an elastic tensile rod slides along a straight guide, while the other slides along a curve. An experimental setup is proposed and developed for determining the critical tensile load of the elastic rod by a dynamic method. This setup allows measuring free vibrations and frequency with the required accuracy. Improvement of the critical load accuracy is achieved by approaching the maximum load to the critical one. Limitations in selecting the test parameters are found according to the required extrapolation accuracy of the dominant natural vibration frequency dependence on tensile load. Theoretical analysis and tests are performed for the rod connection schemes pinned– rigid, rigid–pinned, and rigid–rigid, considering imperfections in the fixation of the rod ends. It is experimentally shown that the system buckling at tensile load is possible and that experimental and theoretical values of the critical load are in good agreement. The achieved accuracy, estimated by the discrepancy between the calculated and the experimental values, is 2.1–3.5%.