Abstract
There have been many studies on the stability of elastic circular arches and rings which are the most simple and fundamental structural elements. And in the well known classical text book of elastic stability by Timoshenko-Gere, one section has been devoted to this problem. Almost of all results of the earlir studies have been obtained by the linearized analysis where various skillful simplifications were employed; however, sufficient information could not be obtained according to the authors view. On the other hand, recent results of this problem by using the nonlinear finite element method under the consideration of followerity of load are evidently different with the above mentioned classical results. The purpose of this paper is to study this problem under non-simplified basic equations by means of geometrically nonlinear, materialy linear and Bernoulli-Kirchhoff Hypothesis and to contribute to development of F. E. M model.
