Stability of cylindrical shells with initial imperfections under the action of external pressure

Abstract

We use the equations of nonlinear theory of shallow shells to solve the problem of stability of thin elastic isotropic cylindrical shells, with small initial shape imperfections, that are under the action of external uniform pressure. The problem solution is constructed by the Rayleigh-Ritz method with the approximation of the shell midsurface displacement by double functional sums in trigonometric and beam functions. The system of nonlinear algebraic equations is solved by using the methods of continuation with respect to a close-to-best parameter. For the initial imperfections of the shells, we use their normalized deflections from the limit points of overcritical branches of the loading trajectories. We consider various cases of the shell fixation and support under loading by lateral and hydrostatic uniform pressure. We also construct the range of values of the critical pressure, which, with the maximal deviation of the shell shape from the cylindrical shape up to 30%, covers practically all known experimental data.