Asymptotic analysis of elastoplastic bifurcation of cylindrical shells with thickness variation under axial compression

Abstract

This paper investigates the elastoplastic bifurcation of axially compressed cylindrical shells, featuring three axisymmetric thickness patterns, i.e., periodic, attenuated, and stepped thickness variations. Two asymptotic methods are utilized to derive the analytical solutions for the critical buckling load. The elastoplastic buckling load can be expressed as a function of the Coefficient of Thickness Variation (CTV) and the buckling load of the perfect shell with nominal uniform thickness. It is found that the derived solutions exhibits good agreement with existing elastic buckling solutions when considering solely the elastic scenario. In this work, a total of three thickness patterns are considered, and it is observed that the newly derived solutions using different methods lead to some disparities in the quadratic terms of CTV. In the end, comparative analysis and discussion are conducted to explore the influence of material properties and thickness variations on the bifurcation buckling of shells.