Initial Imperfection Surveys on Conical Shells at Hoechst Ag

摘要

Stability tests were carried out to study initial imperfections of water filled steel and composite cones. Since the composite cones are carefully wrapped around precision machined mandrels they exhibit much smaller initial imperfections than the metal cones, which are made by wrapping plates around mandrels and then assembling the component parts by welded seams. When comparing the large initial imperfections observed on the metal test specimens (peak to peak deviations of 5 or more wall thicknesses) with the excellent craftmanship achieved on the real structures, the question arises whether the knock-down factors due to initial imperfections observed during the tests can be considered representative of the real structure.