On the occurrence of flutter in the lateral-torsional instabilities of circular arches under follower loads

The lateral-torsional stability of circular arches subjected to radial and follower distributed loading is treated herein. Three loading cases are studied, including the radial load with constant direction, the radial load directed towards the arch centre, and the follower radial load (hydrostatic load), as treated by Nikolai in 1918. For the three cases, the buckling loads are first obtained from a static analysis. As the case of the follower radial load (hydrostatic load) is a non-conservative problem, the dynamic approach is also used to calculate the instability load. The governing equations for out-of-plane vibrations of circular arches under radial loading are then derived, both with and without Wagner's effect. Flutter instabilities may appear for sufficiently large values of opening angle, but flutter cannot occur before divergence for the parameters of interest (civil engineering applications). Therefore, it is concluded that the static approach necessarily leads to the same result as the dynamic approach, even in the non-conservative case.