Out-of-plane elastic buckling of truss beams

In this article we will present a method to directly evaluate the critical point of a non-linear system by using the solution of a polynomial eigenvalue approximation as a starting point for an iterative non-linear system solver. This method will be used to evaluate out-of-plane buckling properties of truss structures for which the lateral displacement of the upper chord has been prevented. The aim is to assess for a number of example structures whether or not the linearized eigenvalue solution gives a relevant starting point for an iterative non-linear system solver in order to find the minimum positive critical load.