LAUSR

Abstract Size-dependent buckling of compressed Bernoulli-Euler nano-beams is investigated by stress-driven nonlocal continuum mechanics. The nonlocal elastic strain is obtained by convoluting the stress field with a suitable smoothing kernel. Incremental equilibrium equations are established by a standard perturbation technique. Higher-order constitutive boundary conditions are naturally inferred by the stress-driven nonlocal integral convolution, equipped with the special bi-exponential kernel. Buckling loads of compressed nano-beams, with kinematic boundary constraints of applicative interest, are numerically calculated and compared with those obtained by the theory of strain gradient elasticity.