Experiments on cylindrical shells under pure bending and external pressure

•Bending has reducing effect on the buckling capacity of the shells;•Under pure bending, ovalization form depends on load application location;•In load combination tests, external pressure increases the growth of deformations;•For bending, the discrepancy of FE and test results is greater than under pressure;•Eq. (4) generalizes the behavior of the present shells under bending and pressure;

Thin-walled cylindrical shells are extensively used in numerous kinds of industrial applications under different cases of load combination. Nonetheless, quite few are the experimental researches that point out the real behavior of cylindrical shells under pure bending and external pressure. In the present experimental study, the buckling behavior of long cylindrical steel shells was investigated under combined bending and uniform peripheral pressure. Relevant FE simulations were also carried out and the results were compared with the experiments. The study shows that the theoretical outcomes predicted by nonlinear finite element analyses agree acceptably with the experimental results in terms of bucking load and modes of deformation. Furthermore, it was found that the initial sectional out of circularity developed by bending (especially higher values) considerably influences the buckling capacity of such shells under uniform external pressure. Ultimately, an interaction formula was proposed to generalize the interaction behavior of the test results within the range of this study.