Thin-walled curved beams. II: Analytical solutions for buckling of arches

In recent years, after Yoo queried the validity of Vlasov’s equations regarding the lateral buckling of a circular arch, there has been a number of papers published with a certain degree of disagreement among various researchers. Based on a comprehensive and consistent formulation of curved beam theory presented in the previous paper, closed-form solutions thus obtained are used for comparison of the present theoretical study to others. In the present paper, major potential sources of discrepancies are traced, thereby the rigor and validity of the present formulation is demonstrated. Also, the study on the buckling modes of arches subjected to the condition of uniform bending gives an insight for better understanding of lateral buckling characteristics of arches.