Buckling of unstiffened cone-cylinder shells subjected to axial compression and thermal loading

Abstract

Numerical and experimental study on the instability of unstiffened mild steel cone-cylinder assembly under simultaneously acting quasi-static axial compression and thermal load is presented in this paper. Results for one model subjected to axial compression were obtained first. Then, the combined action of axial compression and temperature was applied to the remaining four models. There was a good correlation between the experimental data and the numerically obtained buckling load for the cone-cylinders assembly. The percentage difference between experimental to the numerically predicted failure load ranges from +10% to −7%. Finally, the first combined stability domains for cone-cylinder assembly under combined axial compression and temperature was presented. Further study has been conducted to evaluate the buckling effect for cone-cylinder shell subjected to combined loading to the change of these parameters (i) dimensionless radius-to-thickness ratio, rcyl/t, (ii) semi-vertex cone angle, β, and (iii) dimensionless cylinder length-to-cylinder radius ratio, Lcyl/rcyl. Finally, the influence of structural initial imperfection also has been considered by following the recommendation of ECCS (2008).