Inelastic Shell Instability Of Geometrically Imperfect Aluminum Alloy Circular Cylinders Under Uniform External Pressure

摘要

The paper presents new experimental results on the collapse of unstiffened aluminum alloy circular cylinders suffering elastic and plastic nonsymmetric bifurcation buckling under external hydrostatic pressure.These resulte complement the results given in two previous Marine Technology papers written by the senior author, which were intended for the structural design of near-perfect unstiffened and ring-stiffened circular conical shells under external hydrostatic pressure.The present paper presents a structural design chart for geometrically imperfect circular cylinders under uniform external pressure, which is more likely to be used than the design charts for the previous near-perfect vessels because it represents the more 'usual' case.In addition to an experimental analysis, theoretical analyses were also carried out.An analytical solution by von Mises was used, together with a finite element analysis solution, using the Shell 93 element of the ANSYS computer package.Comparison between ANSYS and the analytical solution was reasonable.A design chart is provided, which looks like it could be quite useful for practical purposes.