This paper investigates a cylindrical shell metastructure which has a plateau in its force-displacement curve due to geometric nonlinearity. The metastructure is based on bistable inclined beams with an out-of-plane curvature connected in series. An approximate explicit expression was deduced for this kind of beam relating its horizontal stiffness and force with its vertical deformation. Based on the expression, axial interaction of the series-connected beams was shown to always create a stable plateau in force-displacement curve of the structure. A series of tests were conducted to validate this behavior. The tests confirm that the structure with different geometric details can stably achieve plateau in its force-displacement curve in both the monotonic and cyclic load. Metastructure based on the proposed mechanism can be very simple and light-weighted, making them useful in shock absorption and vibration control. • This paper proposes a cylindrical metastructure that consistently shows a plateau in its force-displacement curve due to geometric nonlinearity • The underlying mechanism to generate the force plateau was demonstrated based on an explicit approximate solution was deduced for inclined bistable beam deduced • A series of tests were conducted to validate behaviour of the metastructure