Asymptotic buckling analysis of elastic structures can be considered a well established procedure (Budiansky, 1974) . It consists in bifurcation analysis of a system of oneparameter differential equations: balance, compatibility and constitutive equations . The aim of this work was to experiment with the use of automatic symbolic computation in the asymptotic bifurcation analysis of elastic beams . To this end an application of the system REDUCE (Hearn, 1971) has been devised in particular for (a) the generation of the formal perturbation equations and (b) the construction of a procedure for solving a specific problem . Further details can be found in Rizzi & Tatone (1985) . A first assessment of the use of symbolic computation systems in structural mechanics can be found in Noor & Andersen (1979), while another application to the solution of perturbation problems is in Noor & Balch (1984) .