Numerical Simulation of Axially Compressed Cylindrical Shells with Circular Cutouts

The present paper deals with FEM modelling of Tennyson’s famous experiment: the buckling problem of axially compressed elastic cylindrical shells with small single circular cutouts. It is completed using ANSYS software package in geometrically linear and nonlinear formulations for three different loading schemes. Two of the loading schemes provide an upper and lower bounds for buckling loads. The third loading scheme corresponds to the experiment and gives an excellent agreement of numerical results with the experimental data. The influence of shell thickness on buckling load is studied in addition to common non–dimensional geometrical shell parameter. Decrease of a shell thickness about two times leads to decrease of buckling load parameter about 7 % in the studied range of cutouts. The efficiency of ANSYS software is proved for the buckling design of shells with highly non–homogeneous stress strain state.