Cylindrical shells under axial compression

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critical modes is not very meaningful. For imperfect shells, the critical mode is moderately well dened (though a few adjacent modes are often close) for a given imperfection form and amplitude. For example, the Type A weld depression has the critical circumferential mode (Rotter and Zhang 1990) ncr (0.822 0.25 w0 /t) r/t (8)

where w0 is the amplitude of the weld depression imperfection (Fig. 2.12). The above studies of weld depressions appear to relate only to a fully axisymmetric imperfection, but the high mode number indicated by Eq. (8), and the potential for a buckle to form if the necessary conditions are achieved over a dimension comparable to a critical buckle wavelength means that the imperfection need not be fully axisymmetric. One of the most signicant of the above studies is consequently that of Berry and Rotter (1996), which examined axisymmetric imperfections extending around a small part of the circumference. Most of these caused the same dramatic loss of strength (Figs 2.9 and 2.13) as a fully axisymmetric imperfection, and even quite a short length of imperfection in the axisymmetric form, extending only slightly further around the circumference than one full wavelength of the critical buckle, produced buckling strength losses comparable with a fully axisymmetric imperfection. This means that a relatively local imperfection that remains stable in form over a small part of the circumference is as detrimental as a fully axisymmetric imperfection. The manner in which these weld depressions may be represented has been the subject of considerable research, and can be read in Kndel et al. (1995, 1996). Further work on the characterisation of the imperfections measured on a full-scale silo in the large study of Ding (Rotter et al. 1992; Ding et al. 1996) has recently been produced by Pircher et al. (2001) which indicates that this form is a useful representation for real structures. Imperfection patterns and amplitudes Both the worst imperfection form strategy and the pursuit of realistic imperfections are usually based on the assumption that the amplitude of the imperfection can be chosen (perhaps with tolerances in mind) after the form has been determined. Unfortunately this is not the case because the shape of the worst imperfection form depends on the amplitude of the imperfection itself. This can be illustrated by calculations of the elastic bifurcation buckling strength of a cylinder with a local axisymmetric imperfection, with a range of different wavelengths used for the imperfection form (Rotter 1997). These calculations were conducted for a xed amplitude of the imperfection, so that the form of the imperfection is changing but not its amplitude. The result is shown in Fig. 2.14. For a small imperfection amplitude of w0 /t = 0.2, the lowest buckling strength is found to occur at a wavelength just above the axisymmetric eigenmode wavelength (Eq. 3). When the amplitude has risen to w0 /t = 1.0, which is perhaps