Elastic buckling of an axially compressed cylindrical panel with three edges simply supported and one edge free

The paper is devoted to a circular cylindrical panel with three edges simply supported and one edge free. This panel is axially compressed by a load uniformly distributed at both ends. The Donnell equations for linear buckling of shells are assumed and the adequate boundary conditions are defined. The deflection function and the force function–the Airy function are formulated with respect to the boundary conditions. The Donnell equations are reduced to a generalized eigenvalue problem with the use of Galerkin method. The results of numerical investigation are presented in figures.