Buckling test of a 3-meter-diameter corrugated graphite-epoxy ring-stiffened cylinder

Abstract

A three m diameter by three m long corrugated cylindrical shell with external stiffening rings was tested to failure by buckling. The corrugation geometry for the graphite epoxy composite cylinder wall was optimized to withstand a compressive load producing an ultimate load intensity of 157.6 kN/m without buckling. The test method used to produce the design load intensity was to mount the specimen as a cantilevered cylinder and apply a pure bending moment to the end. A load introduction problem with the specimen was solved by using the BOSOR 4 shell of revolution computer code to analyze the shell and attached loading fixtures. The cylinder test loading achieved was 101 percent of design ultimate, and the resulting mass per unit of shell wall area was 1.96 kg/sq m