Ambiguity of the critical load for spherical shells with shear damageability of the material

Abstract

The structural-probabilistic approach to the modeling of combined crack formation and material deformation processes is used to develop a technique for solving bifurcation stability problems for thin-walled structural members made of damageable materials under single and repeated loadings. The example of a uniformly compressed spherical shell is used to show that, under repeated loading, thin-walled structural members made of shear damageable materials can lose stability under loads smaller than the upper critical loads. The ambiguity of the critical loads for various damage accumulation processes in the material of thin-walled structures depends on the level and character of loading. This phenomenon can be one possible cause of the experimental data spread and the discrepancy between theoretical and experimental results used to determine the critical loads for spherical and cylindrical shells.