Buckling load of symmetric plane frames using canonical forms

The main objective of this paper is to develop a methodology for an efficient calculation of buckling loads for symmetric frame structures in order to reduce the size of the eigensolution problems involved. This is achieved by decomposing a symmetric model into two submodels followed by their healing to obtain the factors of the model. The buckling load of the entire structure is then obtained by calculating the buckling loads of its factors. The methods of this paper, provide a mathematical foundation and a logical means for dealing with symmetry, in place of looking for various boundary conditions to be imposed for symmetric structures, as in the traditional methods. Examples are provided to illustrate the simplicity and efficiency of the present method.