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Cold-formed thin-walled sections are prone to local buckling caused by residual stresses, geometrical imperfections and inconsistency of material properties. We present a real case of buckling failure and conduct a numerical and experimental study aimed to identify methods capable of predicting such failures. It is important because designers of structures are getting more FEA-oriented and tend to avoid lengthy procedures of cold-formed structures design. Currently adopted methods are complicated and require patience and caution from a designer which is reasonable in case of the most important structural members but not necessarily so in ordinary design. Since it is important, we offer an insight into several FEA and manual methods which were sufficient to predict the failure while remaining fairly simple. Using a non-uniform partial safety factor was still necessary. We hope that this paper will be of interest for people performing a lot of routine analyses and worrying about reliability of their computations.

The study makes an attempt to model a complete vibrating guitar including its non-linear features, specifically the tension-compression of truss rod and tension of strings. The purpose of such a model is to examine the influence of design parameters on tone. Most experimental studies are flawed by uncertainties introduced by materials and assembly of an instrument. Since numerical modelling of instruments allows for deterministic control over design parameters, a detailed numerical model of folk guitar was analysed and an experimental study was performed in order to simulate the excitation and measurement of guitar vibration. The virtual guitar was set up like a real guitar in a series of geometrically non-linear analyses. Balancing of strings and truss rod tension resulted in a realistic initial state of deformation, which affected the subsequent spectral analyses carried out after dynamic simulations. Design parameters of the guitar were freely manipulated without introducing unwanted uncertainties typical for experimental studies. The study highlights the importance of acoustic medium in numerical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]