Some background on thin shell buckling

Ashok Kumar
∗ Anindya Chatterjee
∗∗

∗ IGCAR, Kalpakkam
∗∗ Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur

January 2023

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Thin shells in structural design

Thin shells are common in nuclear, aerospace, and oil industries;

piping systems, pressure vessels, and marine applications.

Ecient: high stiness and strength to weight. Membrane vs.

bending.

Thinner is better, due to cost concerns and operational requirements.

But buckling can be a problem. (Transfer from membrane to bending.)

Introduction January 2023 2 / 14

Thin shells in the nuclear industry

Figure: Safety vessel during erection. Figure source: https://inis.iaea.org/

collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/45/089/45089498.pdf

Introduction January 2023 3 / 14

Buckling (VGO Inc. on YouTube)

Introduction January 2023 4 / 14

Literature on buckling

Real shells buckle at a fraction of their classical buckling loads.

This is due to imperfection in geometry, loading and boundary

conditions.

In early reported experiments, the buckling load observed was 15-50 %

of classical buckling load.

Shell designs have been inuenced heavily by experiments.

Introduction January 2023 5 / 14

Challenges in shell design
Manufactured shell
In principle, shell buckling load
can be computed using actual Designed shell

imperfection shape.

But that shape is not known in

advance.

Design codes prescribe ways to

compute safe loads using
imperfection bounds (without
specifying shape).

Imperfection
bound

Figure: Imperfection shape vs. bound.

Introduction January 2023 6 / 14
Buckling experiments: a glimpse of reality

100 buckling experiments each, on two shell geometries.

One shell is dome-like, and the other a truncated cone.

The shells are mass-produced, inexpensive, made of stainless steel.

Figure: Specimens for experiments. The pen is for scale.

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Measured proles

Figure: Mean dimensions (mm). Variability data given in AK's thesis.

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Buckling experiments

Experiments at room temperature on UTM.

Vertical compression through at rigid plates at a low displacement

rate (1 mm/min).

Figure: Experimental set up.

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Buckling experiments
Axisymmetric until initial peak load, then nonaxisymmetric at the top
of bowl.

Figure: Buckled bowl.

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Buckling experiments
Axisymmetric initially, then lateral bulge, then nonaxisymmetric.

Figure: Three stages of tumbler deformation.

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Buckling experiments (bowl)

≈ factor of 2

Figure: Load displacement for bowl. Left: Initial. Right: Full plots. (If only 5

specimens were used, we might underestimate the variability.)

Buckling experiments (large sample). January 2023 12 / 14

Buckling experiments (tumbler)

20
20

15
15
Load (kN)

Load (kN)
10 10

5 5
snap-through (”thud”)

≈ factor of 5
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 5 10 15
Displacement (mm) Displacement (mm)

Figure: Load displacement for tumbler. Left: Initial. Right: Full plots.

(Post-buckling response is unstable.)

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In this course, we will be doing extremely simple analysis.

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