Snap-through of a pinned-clamped elastica with arbitrarily movable support at the clamped end

This paper studies the snap-through of a pinned-clamped elastica when the support of the clamped end can be moved arbitrarily in plane. The universal snap curve, which describes the critical boundary conditions of the pinned-clamped elasticas, is firstly obtained by determining the saddle-node bifurcation points of the moment-rotation response curves. Based on the universal snap curve, the stability of the pinned-clamped elastica can be determined when the support at the clamped end is moved. The critical boundary can also be directly obtained, where the elastica loses stability and the snap-through occurs between the non-inverted shape and the inverted shape. This study can be useful to reveal the snap-through behavior for some other complex systems where movable supports exist.