Stability Analysis of Cylindrical Shells Resting on Winkler Elastic Foundation Using Semi-Analytical Quadrature Element Method

Abstract

The buried pipelines or vessels and other similar structures made of homogeneous or advanced composite materials are commonly used in civil engineering and biotechnology. The radial stability problem of these structures was widely studied using the cylindrical shell model over the past years. In this paper, the linear stability of cylindrical shells resting on Winkler elastic foundation under uniformly distributed external pressure was analyzed with semi-analytical quadrature element method (QEM). As for the longitudinal direction, the radial deflection of shell was approximated by the quadrature element formulation. While the analytic trigonometric function was adopted for description of radial deflection in circumferential direction. The Numerical results of critical buckling load were compared with the semi-analytical FEM. It is found that the semi-analytical QEM possesses higher computational efficiency and applicability than semi-analytical FEM. Then, the effects of the shell length, radius, and thickness on the critical buckling pressures are systematically investigated through the parametric studies.