Elastic, Plastic, and Creep Buckling of Imperfect Cylinders Under Mechanical and Thermal Loading

Abstract

Based on the concept of secant and tangent modulus, the nonlinear equilibrium and stability equations of thin cylindrical shells under axial compression, external pressure, or external fluid pressure are derived. The resulting equations are applicable to shells without length limitation as the rotations and transverse shears are included in the derivations. The reduction factors for plastic and creep buckling are then obtained. A procedure for determining secant and tangent modulus in the very general case of elastic, plastic, or creep stress in the presence of temperature gradient is proposed. Then, using Donnell’s nonlinear theory of shells, the effect of initial imperfection on the strength of the elastic shell is discussed. The foregoing results are extended to plastic and creep buckling of cylindrical shells of arbitrary length and temperature gradient. Some design curves are proposed using the obtained equations. Finally, the present results are compared with available results in the literature and the accuracy of the method is examined.