Buckling of cylindrical shells with longitudinal joints under external pressure

In this article, the bucking of cylindrical shells with longitudinal joint has been investigated through the experimental and numerical analysis. It was clarified that the buckling behavior of cylindrical shells with longitudinal joints under lateral external pressure is not only related to its dimension, but also longitudinal joint and an imperfection. The buckling of cylindrical shells with rigid joint buckles only once and in multi-lobe buckling, whereas one with flexible joints buckles twice and firstly in single-lobe buckling in the vicinity of the joint, secondly in multi-lobe buckling in remaining un-deformed area. And the more flexible the longitudinal joint, the lower the critical pressure, with respect to the same dimension of jointed cylindrical shells and imperfection condition. Moreover the numerical analysis approaches were also presented and verified, by which the imperfection can greatly enlarge the effect of joint on buckling has been demonstrated.