Towards a new shape of self-stiffened cylindrical shell under external pressure

The paper proposes a new shape of cylindrical shell formed by multiples vaults which gives a self-stiffening against buckling. By an experimental and numerical study of cylindrical shells with a repeated defect, on the circumferential direction made only of outside oriented wave-defects, it is showed that multiple cylindrical shells can have a good behaviour in buckling. An optimal behaviour is obtained by optimisation of the vaults number, which conduces to a special multiple vault cylindrical shell named ASTER shell