Reduced-stiffness method in the theory of smooth shells and the classical analysis of stability (review)

We present a promising method for the investigation of the load-carrying capacity of imperfect shells based on simple analytic approaches. This method is called the reduced-stiffness method. In many cases, it enables one to obtain analytic relations for the estimation of the lower bounds of buckling loads for actual shells. We present the exact lower bounds of the buckling loads for compressed smooth cylindrical shells. For comparison, we also used the classical approach to the analysis of the critical loads for shells.