Buckling of thin shells: an overview

play a stronger role in stringer-stiffened cylinders (Weller 1978). Axial restraint at the boundaries may increase the buckling load by more than 50%. Singer and his colleagues (Weller et al. 1974; Singer and Rosen 1976; Singer and Abramovich 1979; Singer 1982a,b, 1983) contributed greatly to understanding the buckling of stiffened cylinders under axial compression, with special emphasis on boundary conditions and load eccentricities. Load eccentricities in stringer-stiffened cylinders were rst studied by Stuhlman et al. (1966), followed by extensive work by Singers group (Weller et al. 1974; Singer 1983). These studies showed that the buckling load can be reduced by up to 50% in some practical congurations, but that prebuckling deformations are only signicant if the shell is short enough for the boundary condition to affect stresses throughout the shell length. The many studies from Singers group demonstrated conclusively that the consequences of geometric imperfections should be considered only after the effects of boundary conditions and load eccentricities have been used to nd the perfect shell strength accurately. They developed an experimental technique to determine the real achieved boundary conditions and load eccentricities using non-destructive vibration methods. This technique also gives good assessments of experimental buckling loads (Singer and Abramovich 1979; Singer 1982a,b, 1983). More recent studies have been undertaken by Byskov and Hansen (1980), Dowling et al. (1982), Dowling (1991) and Dsing (1994). Further discussion of stiffened cylinders is given in Chapter 11. Summaries of research: books and review articles Many other shell buckling problems have been studied in recent decades, and several books and review articles have been written on the subject. Noor (1990) provides an extensive list of books, conference proceedings and survey articles on shell structures. Several books were published around 15 years ago (Calladine 1983a; Kollar and Dulacska 1984; Yamaki 1984; Bushnell 1985) which provide a wealth of information on the buckling behaviour and strength of thin shells. Conference proceedings (Koiter 1960; Budinansky 1974; Koiter and Mikhailov 1980; Ramm 1982; Thompson and Hunt 1983; Jullien 1991; Rotter 1996a; Krupka and Schneider 1997; Drew and Pellegrino 2002), journal special issues (Galletly 1995; Teng 1998) and paper collections (Fung and Sechler 1974; Zamrik and Dietrich 1982; Harding et al. 1982; Narayanan 1985) are also sources of very useful information. Many review articles on thin shell buckling have also been written. Nash (1960) summarised early achievements in shell buckling research. Hoff (1966) discussed the buckling behaviour of cylinders with various boundary conditions. Work on elastic postbuckling and imperfection sensitivity was reviewed in Budiansky and Hutchinson (1966, 1979), Hutchinson and Koiter (1970), Tvergaard (1976) and Citerley (1982). Babcock (1974) and Singer (1980, 1982b) surveyed experimental research on shell buckling. Babcock (1983) addressed imperfection sensitivity, dynamic buckling, plastic buckling, experiments and computer buckling analysis