Experiments on conical shell reducers under uniform external pressure

In previous studies, a proliferation of research work has been undertaken on the buckling behavior of shell structures particularly conical shells. Nonetheless, no experimental studies are found in the literature on the buckling of a full and real configured model of a slender shell reducer with two cylindrical end boundaries. To this end, buckling behavior of three conical shell reducers under uniform peripheral pressure was investigated and evaluated experimentally in this paper. In addition, relevant FE simulations as well as theoretical predictions were taken into account to compare buckling load and modes of deformation. Derived results were aimed at generalizing the data for conical reducers in full scale within the range of this study.

Research highlights
► The buckling load of the frusta directly depends on the slant length.
► Cylindrical ends of the cones (elastic boundaries) affect the buckling behavior.
► There is no interval between initial and overall buckling incidence of the models.
► All the predictions overestimate the buckling pressure of the models.