Post-buckling behavior of a double-hinged rod under self-weight

Post-buckling phenomena of slender rods have attracted great attention for both theoretical and engineering aspects. In this study, we explored the post-buckling behavior of a slender rod with two hinged ends under its self-weight. We first established the potential energy functional of the system, and then derived the governing differential equations according to the principle of least potential energy. We further addressed the physical meaning of the Lagrange multiplier by analyzing the force equilibrium. A computer code of shooting method was developed by using the commercial software MathCAD, which has proved efficient in computing the post-buckling configurations of the rod. We finally discussed the buckling of an oil sucker rod adopting our numerical results, which will be beneficial to the engineering design.