Stimulating the realistic worst case buckling scenario of axially compressed unstiffened cylindrical composite shells

A numerical model is proposed in order to study the before mentioned thesis. The results show that the proposed numerical model induces a physical meaningful and realistic buckling response in a cylindrical shell. It can be validated that the interaction between single dimple motion and the deformation behavior of a cylinder in the pre-buckling range significantly influences the buckling load. Based on experimental data it can also be shown that the lower bound of the buckling load is accompanied by a characteristic post-buckling pattern shortly after collapse.