Load capacity of thin-walled prestressed vessels with elastic intermediate layer

Abstract

This paper discusses such structures as a double-walled vessel, with a prestressed elastic separation layer; the metallic liner in a shrunk concrete pipeline; the Marman belt for the separation of a satellite from the launcher. The prestressed double-walled cylindrical vessel has an initial branching point and the related buckling load increases with increasing stiffness of the intermedate layer. The buckling load will be infinitely large for a rigid layer (or no layer at all) and in this case the load capacity would only be limited by the size of any local imperfection which prevents the contact of the two shells in a certain area. This paper illustrates some results from the investigation of these systems. For the special case of the liner in a rigid boundary an imperfection of the inner shell has been taken into consideration. The tests performed accorded fairly well with the theory.