Cylindrical shells under axial compression

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imperfection pattern for a given structure and loading; (c) a search for theoretical lower bound strengths that make design independent of the form and amplitude of imperfections; and (d) attempts to base design on imperfection patterns found in real structures. Lower bounds on test results The simplest and oldest procedure in addressing the scatter shown in Fig. 2.3 has been to draw a lower bound on all available test results. This approach can be traced back at least to Robertson (1928) and Wilson and Newmark (1933), but has been continually used right up to the present time, with the studies of Donnell (1934), Timoshenko (1936), Harris et al. (1957), Weingarten et al. (1965a), Hoff and Soong (1967), Almroth et al. (1970), Steinhardt and Schulz (1971) and Bornscheuer (1982) being steps on this path. The process of empirical rule development may be read in Bornscheuer (1982). This method has a number of key disadvantages. First, if all tests are included, some have extremely low strengths, and the lower bound or 90 percentile value is found to be very low indeed. Some of the tests are affected by plasticity, and some have poor loading arrangements or poor boundary support, and many are poorly documented so that these questions cannot be resolved. Thus many tests must be eliminated from the database, often with only weak justication, so that the apparently scientic process of devising a lower bound becomes rather dependent on the subjective view of the assessor. Second, there is generally little evidence of the amplitude and pattern of the geometric imperfections in these test shells, so that the huge literature on imperfection sensitivity is useless, and it is not possible to derive tolerance measures in relation to the dened strengths. Third, the method of fabrication of laboratory shells is generally very different from that used for full-scale structures, so the imperfection forms and residual stresses in them are probably unrepresentative of real construction. In addition, the load application and boundary conditions of real construction are rarely represented in laboratory tests, so they may again be quite unrepresentative. Despite all these disadvantages, all current standards are effectively based on such empirical lower bounds. The most recent change, introduced into the ENV 1993-1-6 standard, attempts to break away from lower bounds by dening different curves with associated amplitudes of imperfections. These curves are still empirically based, but they do attempt to dene strengths that can be checked against tolerance measures. Few attempts have been made to use modern calculation methods to relate imperfection sensitivity and tolerance measurements to empirical curves used in design. The only known attempt is that of Rotter (1997). The worst imperfection pattern The search for the worst imperfection pattern directly addresses the rst question identied above. The mostly widely used interpretation of this concept is that an