A study of the plastic buckling of axially compressed cylindrical shells with a thick-shell theory. (Q1347487)

The buckling equations for plastic buckling of axially compressed cylindrical shells are derived with the principle of virtual work on the base of a transverse shear deformable displacement field. A thick shell theory is used for computation of critical load. In the numerical examples, the dependence of the buckling mode on the ratio of radius to thickness \(R/h\) and on the ratio of length to radius \(L/R\) is studied in detail. The results show that this dependence divides the \((R/h, L/r)\)-plane into simply connected regions each of which corresponds to a buckling mode.