Buckling of GFRP Columns: An Empirical Approach to Design

This paper presents the results of an experimental study concerning the buckling characteristics of pultruded columns with a hollow circular cross section. Commercially available structural elements were selected from three different manufacturers. Resonant frequency and short-column strength were use to obtain the bending stiffness and the local buckling load of the material. Based on such experimental work, a new design method is proposed herein following Maquoi and Rondal’s formulation. The proposed method has been verified experimentally with test results of hollow rectangular closed section columns and also with experimental work gathered from the literature. In all cases, the method developed in this project proved to be successful. Finally, such method was compared with Barbero and Tomblin’s method, showing some differences in the values predicted with the two methods. Some experimental results, which were predicted accurately with the method proposed herein, were overestimated with Barbero and Tomblin’s method.