Strength and elastic buckling of a sandwich cylindrical pressure vessel with dished heads

Abstract

The paper is devoted to a sandwich cylindrical pressure vessel closed with a dished head at both ends and loaded with external uniformly distributed pressure. Non-standard construction of the vessel is presented characterised by an asymmetric cross-section and superellipsoidal dished heads. The strength and buckling of such structure is numerically studied with the use of the finite element method limited to the linear range. The calculations are carried out for models with aluminium faces and aluminium foam core. The obtained results revealed the advantage of the superellipsoidal dished head compared to the hemispherical one in terms of stress distribution — the edge effect being a typical problem in such structures is diminished. This opens potential applications of such solution in actual structures. It is pointed out that the application of a superellipsoidal head assure a more favourable shear stress distribution in the core.