Slender thin cylindrical shells under unsymmetrical strip loads

Modern procedures for the design of shell structures against buckling have their basis in analytical studies of axisymmetric shell geometries under the very simple load cases of uniform compression, external pressure and torsion. Studies of more complex but realistic stress states were based on prebuckling analyses using either membrane theory or linear bending theory because even these involved considerable mathematical complexity. As a result, only limited conclusions for practical design could be drawn and the effects of geometric nonlinearity could not be assessed. With recent advances in computing power and nonlinear finite element programs, it is now possible to undertake nonlinear analyses of complex load patterns that would have been very difficult to do only a decade or so ago.A number of practical load cases lead to a strip of pressure down one meridian, of which the best known ones are probably wind on tanks, eccentric discharge in silos, local thermal differentials, and partial fluid filling of a cylinder. This paper explores some of the rather unexpected stress patterns and modes of buckling that are predicted to develop in thin-walled cylindrical shells under such unsymmetrical strips of normal pressure. The results of a parametric study are presented to show the influence of the circumferential spread of the pressure strip on the structural behaviour. It is shown that the structural response to such loads may be very different, depending on whether the load acts inward or outward, and whether geometric nonlinearity and geometric imperfections are also included in the assessment.

► Studies of shells under complex load patterns were difficult before powerful PCs and the FEA method.
► Many practical load cases emulate a strip of pressure down the meridian of a cylindrical shell.
► These include: silos under eccentric discharge & wind, partial fluid in horizontal tank etc.
► Parametric numerical study of cylinders under meridional strips of inward/outward pressure.
► Structural effects, stress patterns and elastic linear & nonlinear buckling modes illustrated.