Stringer Stiffened Cylinders on Local Supports – The Plastic Buckling Behavior

Abstract

The buckling behavior of locally supported cylinders is a topic that is still the subject of many investigations. Adequate design rules have yet to be incorporated into the codes. In this contribution, the plastic buckling behavior of a stiffened cylinder on local supports is studied. Our research consists of two principal components, i.e. experiments on scale models and numerical simulations. Here the numerical simulations are discussed. Firstly the effect of the yield stress is investigated. In order to find a design rule, a large parametrical study has to be performed. In this contribution, the characteristics and the results of this study are described. The simulations show that for a radius to thickness ratio of the cylinder equal to 250, the optimal stiffener dimensions correspond with a plastic buckling phenomenon and a failure stress that is larger than the yield stress. For larger values of the ratio, the elastic instability of the stiffeners precedes the plastic buckling and this shows that the stiffener configuration is not suitable for these values of the radius to thickness ratio.