Buckling and post-buckling behaviour of elastic seven-layered cylindrical shells – FEM study

• We model new sandwich shell with a trapezoidal-shaped steel main core.
• Critical load is higher than the classical one-layer shell with this same mass.
• Increasing value of corrugation pitch gives slightly smaller values of critical pressure.
• Investigated new multilayer has stable equilibrium paths.

The paper is devoted to buckling and post-buckling problems of an elastic seven-layered cylindrical shell under uniformly distributed pressure. The shell is an untypical sandwich structure composed of main corrugated core and two three-layer faces. Numerical FEM model for the shell has been elaborated. The calculations have been performed with the use of the ANSYS code for elastic shells of different dimensions. The linear and non-linear analyses of the shells have been performed with the use of the finite elements method. Critical pressure and equilibrium paths for the family of seven-layered shells subjected to uniformly distributed external pressure are calculated. The influence of corrugation pitch of main core and the length of the shell on the critical pressure has been determined. The results of these investigations are presented on the graphs.