Local buckling of axially compressed cylindrical shells with different boundary conditions

Abstract The concept of local buckling of compressed isotropic cylindrical shells is developed in this paper. Buckling of axially compressed cylindrical shells under different types of local perturbations has been studied in many theoretical and experimental researches. Different methodologies, based on these studies, were suggested for design buckling load estimation. However, in most calculations and experiments only two classical boundary conditions were considered: fixed displacement of the shell edges in the axial direction or fixed and uniformly distributed compressive load. Both of them are hard or even impossible to realize in practical applications. In the present paper we studied the shell behaviour with 6 different types of boundary conditions, which included the above mentioned two types. We considered shell loading through rigid plates with different types of possible displacements (degrees of freedom) and through stiffening ribs at the edges of the shell. Two theoretical methods were applied: numerical (finite element method) and analytical (Pogorelov's geometrical method). Lateral force was applied as a perturbation and stability of the shell under load combination was studied. The results of calculations were compared with obtained experimental data for validation of numerical solutions. Then metastability and post-buckling behaviour of the structure was studied using theoretical and experimental methods. In particular the interval of existence and stability of post-buckling equilibrium states of the shells with one or several buckles was studied systematically. The post-buckling equilibrium paths and corresponding energy barriers for all mentioned types of boundary conditions were analyzed. Parametric analysis of boundary value problem allowed to establish the main (Batdorf) structure parameter. Formula for design buckling load was suggested and discussed.