Plastic Collapse of Thin Internally Pressurized Torispherical Shells

Abstract

The plastic collapse pressures of internally pressurized thin torispherical shells are given in the present paper. The influence of both the geometric parameters (i.e., r/D, RS /D and D/t) and the material properties (yield stress σyp and the strain-hardening coefficient) on the plastic collapse pressures were investigated. Both steel and aluminium shells were analyzed and, based on the present parametric study, approximate design equations for calculating the plastic collapse pressures are suggested. The asymmetric buckling pressures, pcr , for torispherical shells (obtained from a companion paper) are also compared with the plastic collapse pressures, pc , to determine which are the lower and, thus, control the mode of failure. In addition, the approximate design equations for pcr and pc are compared with some experimental results on small machined models; the agreement between theory and test was quite good.