The effect of general imperfections on the buckling of cylindrical shells

An experimental and theoretical investigation of the effect of general imperfections on the buckling load of a circular cylindrical shell under axial compression was carried out. A non-contact probe has been used to make complete imperfection surveys on electroformed copper shells before and during the loading process up to the buckling load. The data recording process has been fully automated and the data reduction was done on an IBM 7094. Three-dimensional plots were obtained of the measured initial imperfection surfaces and of the growth of these imperfections under increasing axial load. The modal components of the measured imperfection surfaces were also obtained. The theoretical solution located the limit points of the post-buckled states. A simplified imperfection model was used consisting of one axisymmetric and one asymmetric component. For global buckling the correlation between the theoretical buckling loads and the experimental values was found to be good

Towards a Probabilistic Preliminary Design Criterion for Buckling Critical Composite Shells

A probability-based analysis method for predicting buckling loads of compression-loaded laminated-composite shells is presented, and its potential as a basis for a new shell-stability design criterion is demonstrated and discussed. In particular, a database containing information about specimen geometry, material properties, and measured initial geometric imperfections for a selected group of laminated-composite cylindrical shells is used to calculate new buckling-load "knockdown factors". These knockdown factors are shown to be substantially improved, and hence much less conservative than the corresponding deterministic knockdown factors that are presently used by industry. The probability integral associated with the analysis is evaluated by using two methods; that is, by using the exact Monte Carlo method and by using an approximate First-Order Second- Moment method. A comparison of the results from these two methods indicates that the First-Order Second-Moment method yields results that are conservative for the shells considered. Furthermore, the results show that the improved, reliability-based knockdown factor presented always yields a safe estimate of the buckling load for the shells examined