Original Article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Effect of welding residual stress on plastic 226(10) 2381–2392
! IMechE 2012

buckling of axially compressed cylindrical Reprints and permissions:

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shells with patterned welds DOI: 10.1177/0954406211433976

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Chulin Yu, Zhiping Chen, Ji Wang, Shunjuan Yan and Licai Yang

Abstract
An experimental–numerical investigation of the effect of welding residual stress on plastic buckling of axially compressed
cylindrical shells with patterned welds is carried out. Two cylindrical shell specimens with different pattern of welds are
made according to manufacturing process used in engineering. Their initial geometric imperfections, axial and circum-
ferential strain, buckling load, etc., are experimentally obtained. Inherent strain method used for simulating welding
residual stress field is presented. Two different numerical modeling methods for the purpose of evaluating the effect of
welding residual stress on plastic buckling are illustrated and the validity is verified by experiment. It is found that, load–
displacement curve before buckling is altered, plastic buckling critical load is decreased to some extent, and the buckling
deformation such as the number and the uniformity of waveforms of circumferential welds are changed when welding
residual stress exists. For the above phenomena, the reason why welding residual stress has an influence on plastic
buckling is also quantitatively analyzed from the point of stress variation.

Keywords
Cylindrical shells, axial buckling, plastic, welding, residual stress, geometric imperfection

Date received: 29 June 2011; accepted: 5 December 2011

compressed cylindrical shells were Shao et al.,11

Introduction
Research of plastic buckling of axially compressed
welded steel cylindrical shells has a wide application
in engineering1 such as plastic buckling failure of
silos, and elephant’s foot buckling failure of oil tanks.
However, there is a great discrepancy between
measured axial plastic buckling critical load and theo-
retical axial plastic buckling critical load. It is found
that initial geometric imperfections are the main
reason for this discrepancy.2,3 Welded steel cylindrical
shells in engineering are usually constructed by many
curved steel panels. Welds between these curved panels
are regarded as one of the worst initial geometric
imperfections to axial plastic buckling of cylindrical
shells with patterned welds.4 In the past few decades,
researchers have done a lot of work on initial geometric
imperfections in the form of welds and some progress
has been made.5–10 While, research of the effect of weld-
ing residual stress on plastic buckling of cylindrical
shells is going on slowly.
Previous researchers who learned the effect of weld-
ing residual stress on plastic buckling of axially
Ravn-Jensen and Tvergaard,12 etc. They adopted
experimental and theoretical method to explore the
effect of welding residual stress on plastic buckling of
axially compressed cylindrical shells with only one lon-
gitudinal weld, respectively. Shao manufactured two
cylindrical shell specimens with similar sizes (one was
annealed while the other was not) and obtained some
qualitative conclusions by comparing experimental
results only. Although the two specimens do have
different amplitude of welding residual stress, it is
debatable to get these conclusions because the initial
geometric imperfections of the two specimens are not
the same actually. Jensen only learned the effect of lon-
gitudinal weld-induced welding residual stress on the
Institute of Process Equipment, Zhejiang University, People’s Republic of
China
Corresponding author:
ZP Chen, Institute of Process Equipment, Zhejiang University, 38 Zheda
Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, People’s Republic of China.
Email: zhiping@zju.edu.cn

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2382
plastic buckling of axially compressed cylindrical shells,
considering the fact that it is impossible to construct a
compatible welding residual stress field for circumfer-
ential welds analytically. In particular, it is circumfer-
ential welds rather than longitudinal welds that are
more harmful to plastic buckling of axially compressed
cylindrical shells.
In this case, numerical simulation method is an
ideal way to overcome the drawbacks of experimental
and theoretical methods. Unfortunately, few papers
could be retrieved in this field. Instead, many papers
focused on the effect of welding residual stress on
elastic buckling of axially compressed cylindrical
shells, for example, Bornscheuer and Hafner,13
Rotter and Teng,14 Holst et al.,15 Pircher and
Russell16 Hübner et al.,17 Lin and Li,18 Aiman
et al.,19 etc. Bornscheuer and Rotter adopted two dif-
ferent methods for constructing welding residual stress
field, which were methods of inputting welding resid-
ual stress and method of inputting welding residual
plastic strain, respectively. Holst, Pircher, Hübner,
and Lin explored the effect of welding residual stress
on elastic buckling behavior of silos, tanks, etc. using
the same method of constructing welding stress field
as Rotter. However, on the one hand, they simplify
circumferential weld-induced deformation to be an
axisymmetric form and do not pay attention to veri-
fication with test results;20 on the other hand, as plas-
tic buckling of axially compressed cylindrical shells
with patterned welds involves not only geometric non-
linearity but also material nonlinearity, research of
effect of welding residual stress on plastic buckling
of axially compressed cylindrical shells with patterned
welds is much more complicated.
In this article, both experimental and numerical sim-
ulation methods are adopted to investigate the effect of
welding residual stress on plastic buckling of axially
compressed cylindrical shells with patterned welds.
The detailed work done in this article is as follows: an
axial buckling experimental platform with automatic
scanning function of geometric imperfections is
designed. Two cylindrical shell specimens with pat-
terned welds are manufactured according to
manufacturing process used in engineering; initial geo-
metric imperfections, axial and circumferential strains,
and axial plastic buckling critical load of specimens are
experimentally obtained. Inherent strain method used
for constructing welding residual stress field is pre-
sented; two different numerical modeling methods for
the purpose of evaluating the effect of welding residual
stress on plastic buckling are illustrated and the validity
is verified by experiment. The reason why welding resid-
ual stress has an influence on plastic buckling is also
quantitatively analyzed from the point of stress
variation.
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Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 226(10)
Axial buckling experimental
platform set-up
Arbocz and Hol21 first carried out some research on
equipment with automatic scanning function of initial
geometric imperfections of cylindrical shells. Later,
Berry et al.,22 Teng and Lin,23 etc., also developed sim-
ilar equipment. The working principle of the equipment
mentioned above is as follows: overall initial geometric
imperfections of cylindrical shell specimen are obtained
by scanning radial, axial, and circumferential coordi-
nates. Usually, the cylindrical shell specimen stays sta-
tionary taking account of its large rotating mass. Laser
displacement sensor is fixed on a screw which can
change its rotary motion to linear motion of the laser
displacement sensor. The screw is fixed on a rotating
frame which can rotate around the axis of cylindrical
shell specimen. Using above-mentioned measures, laser
displacement sensor can not only rotate around the
specimen but also move up and down along the axial
direction of the specimen. Thus, radial, axial, and cir-
cumferential coordinates of outer surface of the cylin-
drical shell specimen can be obtained.
In view of the above-mentioned principle, an axial
buckling experimental platform with automatic scan-
ning function of initial geometric imperfections is
designed. Its typical characteristics are as follows: (a)
initial geometric imperfection scanning function and
axial loading function are integrated together; the spe-
cimen only needs to position once during the whole test
process; (b) high-precision laser displacement and axial
load sensors are used. Appearance of the experimental
platform is shown in Figure 1.
In order to obtain accurate and reliable initial geo-
metric imperfections, the repeatability test of laser
Figure 1. Axial buckling experimental platform with automatic
scanning function of initial geometric imperfections.
Yu et al.
displacement sensor under linear motion and rotational
motion is carried out. It is found that the measured
maximum radius errors in both cases are 0.13 and
0.18 mm, respectively, which shows that there is a
good repeatability for the experimental platform. It is
worth noting that there may be some misalignment
error between central axis of cylindrical shell specimen
and central axis of rotating frame. However, this error
can convert to rigid displacement of finite element
model (FEM); so, FEM result will not be significantly
affected.24
Manufacturing method and
strain gage set-up
Manufacturing method
There were two classic manufacturing methods of cylin-
drical shell specimen with patterned welds in previous
research. Representative of the first manufacturing
method was Schmidt and Swadlo.25 He cut a single
large flat plate into several pieces of small flat plates at
first, then welded these small flat plates together to form
a new large flat plate with patterned welds and finally
rolled this new large flat plate into a cylindrical shell
specimen. Representative of the second manufacturing
method was Teng and Lin.23 He rolled two large flat
plates into two semi-cylindrical shells at first, then com-
bined these two semi-cylindrical shells to form a whole
cylindrical shell specimen by welding two longitudinal
welds and finally welded additional pattered welds at
given locations using argon arc welding machine.
For Schmidt’s method, it is unrealistic to perform
welding before rolling, because the different responses of
the shell to circumferential welding and meridional weld-
ing cannot be properly reFected. For Teng’s method, it is
also unrealistic because there are two longitudinal welds
across the whole height of the shell specimens. In this arti-
cle, a new manufacturing method is used to make the
cylindrical shell specimens. Its novel aspects lie in that
the manufacturing process of the shell specimens is similar
with the cylindrical shells with patterned welds in engi-
neering. The detailed manufacturing process is as follows:
pieces of small flat panels are rolled into curved shells first,
and then these curved shells are welded together in a
sequence to form a whole cylindrical shell specimen with
longitudinal welds separated with each other. By this way,
the real characteristics of welding-induced geometric
imperfections and residual stress of the shells with pat-
terned welds in engineering can be reflected in laboratory.
Two specimens named C1L2 and C2L3 are made in this
article, C and L represent circumferential and longitudi-
nal welds, respectively, and the number after C and L
represents the number of circumferential and longitudinal
welds, respectively. These two specimens have the same
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2383
geometric sizes: radius R ¼ 400 mm, height H ¼ 420 mm,
and thickness t ¼ 1.46 mm. Difference between these two
specimens is as follows: C1L2 consists of two curved
panels; C2L3 consists of three curved panels. Both ends
of the specimens are mounted with rigid rings with a
groove to avoid pre-buckling deformation. Considering
the depth of the groove, actual effective height of the speci-
mens is 390 mm.
To achieve large welding residual stress amplitude,
argon arc welding machine is used to weld cylindrical
shell specimen with large thermal input and high weld-
ing speed. To be special, no heat treatment is taken
after welding. Photos of C1L2 and C2L3 assembled
with rigid end rings are shown in Figure 2(a) and (b),
respectively.
Strain gage set-up
It is difficult to get accurate strain changes before and
after buckling using traditional static strain measure-
ment instrument. So, high-speed dynamic strain mea-
surement instrument with 20 kHz sampling frequency is
adopted. Bidirectional strain gages in orthogonal direc-
tion are pasted on the outer surface of cylindrical shell
specimen. Detailed locations of the strain gages of
C1L2 and C2L3 are shown in Figure 3(a) and (b),
respectively. In Figure 3, the letter S represents strain
gage, and black L-shaped symbol represents strain
gages; bold solid line represents circumferential and
longitudinal welds.
Experimental results
Experimental buckling deformation of C1L2 is shown
in Figure 4(a); the relationship between axial/circum-
ferential stress and axial/circumferential strain is shown
in Figure 4(b) and (c), respectively. In Figure 4, A and
C after strain gage number represent axial and circum-
ferential strains, respectively.
Experimental buckling deformation of C2L3 is
shown in Figure 5(a); the relationship between axial/
circumferential stress and axial/circumferential strain
is shown in Figure 5(b) and (c), respectively.
Figure 2. Photos of cylindrical shell specimens assembled with
rigid end rings: (a) C1L2 and (b) C2L3.
2384 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 226(10)

Figure 3. Schematic diagrams of strain gage set-up of cylindrical

shell specimens: (a) C1L2 and (b) C2L3 (mm).

Material properties
Three tensile specimens are made. Measured stress–strain
relationship is shown in Figure 6. Typical parameters
such as elastic modulus E (MPa) and lower yield stress
ReL (MPa) are listed in Table 1.
It can be seen from Table 1 that mechanical proper-
ties of the three tensile specimens are almost the same,
but the data of tensile specimen 1 are lower than the
Figure 4. Experimental results of C1L2: (a) buckling deforma-
other two. To be conservative, mechanical properties of tion, (b) axial stress vs. axial strain, and (c) circumferential stress
tensile specimen 1 are used in numerical simulation. vs. circumferential strain.

Numerical procedures
Modeling methods
It is difficult to explore the effect of welding residual
stress on axial plastic buckling only by experiment. This
is doubtless partly due to the difficulty of separating
welding residual stress and geometric imperfections.
So, in this article, two different FEM modeling methods
are adopted to explore the effect of welding residual
stress on plastic buckling of axially compressed cylin-
drical shells with patterned welds: (a) measured geo-
metric imperfections (MGI) modeling method, it only
includes the measured initial geometric imperfections;
(b) measured geometric imperfections with large resi-
dual stress (MGILRS) modeling method, it includes
both the measured initial geometric imperfections and
a large amplitude of initial welding residual stress which
equals to lower yield stress of the specimens in order to
simplify the analysis. By comparing the results obtained
by MGI and MGILRS methods with those of the
experiment, it can be found that not only numerical
method is more close to the real condition, but also
the effect of welding residual stress on axial plastic
buckling can be obtained.
Numerical simulation method of welding
So far, thermal elastic plastic finite element and inher-
ent strain finite element (ISFE) methods are two main
methods of welding simulation.26 Thermal elastic plas-
tic finite element method can be easily used to learn
generating process of welding residual stress and
deformation. However, some problems still need to
be addressed such as lacking of real stress–strain rela-
tionship, difficulty in choosing a proper heat model,

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Yu et al.
Figure 5. Experimental results of C2L3: (a) buckling deforma-
tion, (b) axial stress vs. axial strain, and (c) circumferential stress
vs. circumferential strain.
and long calculating time for large structure. For the
present purpose of evaluating the effect of welding
residual stress on the plastic buckling of axially com-
pressed cylindrical shells with patterned welds, the use
of overly elaborate approaches to simulate welding
process is unnecessary as the computational cost
needs to be kept reasonably low and the buckling
behavior is believed to be not sensitive to highly local-
ized stress changes. In practical, there have been many
successful applications in calculating welding residual
stress and deformation of cylindrical shells using ISFE
method already. Therefore, ISFE method is adopted
to construct initial welding residual stress field in this
article.
It is proved that longitudinal inherent strain and
transverse inherent strain are two main strain compo-
nents that affect welding residual stress and
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2385
Figure 6. Stress–strain relationship of tensile specimens.
Table 1. Tested results of tensile specimens.
Specimen no. E (MPa) ReL (MPa)
1 200,779 335
2 222,449 340
3 224,808 340
deformation. Welding residual stress and deformation
can be obtained accurately if longitudinal inherent
strain and transverse inherent strain are given precisely.
Distribution characteristics of welding residual stress of
cylindrical shell specimens which are obtained using
ISFE method will be analyzed later.
Finite element procedures
ABAQUS is used for numerical simulations. Both
geometric and material nonlinearities are included.
Material constitutive law is true stress–strain relation-
ship which is based on tensile test data. Mises yield
criteria are used. Element type is S4R with seven inte-
gration points along thickness direction. Arc-length
method is adopted during the whole numerical
simulation.
Three factors need to be taken into consideration
when the number of elements is decided, which are
convergence of numerical simulation result, clear
expression of initial geometric imperfections, and
time cost of scanning initial geometric imperfections.
In this article, 254 and 109 nodes are given in circum-
ferential and axial directions, respectively, for C1L2;
261 and 105 nodes are given in circumferential and
axial directions, respectively, for C2L3. In sum, there
are 27,432 elements for C1L2 and 27,144 elements for
C2L3.
2386 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 226(10)

Boundary conditions
Boundary conditions are as follows: (a) at the welding
calculation step, fix all degrees of nodes at lower and
upper ends of cylindrical shells except the degrees in
axial direction; at the same time, fix axial degree of a
node to insure no rigid displacement; (b) at the axial
buckling step, fix all degrees of nodes at lower end and
fix all degrees of nodes at upper end except the degrees
in axial direction. A rigid plate is defined to simulate
the pressure head of experimental platform. A contact
pair is established to simulate interaction between pres-
sure head and the upper end of cylindrical shell speci-
men. Then, the axial load can be obtained easily
through the force and reaction force relationship.

Numerical results
When MGI method is used for C1L2, Mises stress con-
tour and top view at buckling are shown in Figure 7(a)
and (b), respectively; axial and circumferential stress
distributions of nodes on path 1 on outer surface are
shown in Figure 7(c) and (d), respectively. (Path 1 is a
generatrix which is 16.5 far away from the upper lon-
gitudinal weld of C1L2; its schematic diagram is shown
in Figures 3(a) and 7(a); StI and StB represent the ini-
tial and buckling step in numerical calculation respec-
tively, the rectangular box represents buckling zone. All
figures calculated using numerical methods in this arti-
cle are magnified 15 times for clarity.)
Similarly, the numerical results of C1L2 using
MGILRS method are shown in Figure 8, and the
numerical results of C2L3 by using MGI and
MGILRS methods are shown in Figures 9 and 10,
respectively. Path 2 is a generatrix which is 22.5 far
away from the upper longitudinal weld of C2L3, and its
schematic diagram is shown in Figures 3(b) and 9(a).

Comparison and discussion of results

Analysis of measured stress vs.þþ strain relationship
It can be seen from Figures 4(b) and (c) and 5(b) and (c)
that, for most of the curves, a suddenly change which can
be called snap back phenomenon can be found during the
loading process. This is partly because local buckling
occurs before the overall buckling of the shell specimens.
Figure 7. Numerical results of C1L2 obtained using MGI
Furthermore, axial and circumferential stresses mainly
method: (a) Mises stress contour at buckling (MPa), (b) top view
consist of compressive stress; they increase with the
of buckling deformation, (c) axial stress of nodes on path 1 on
increase of axial load, and very large compressive strain outer surface, and (d) circumferential stress of nodes on path 1
can be observed when the overall plastic buckling occurs. on outer surface.
This phenomena show that axial plastic buckling is
directly related to axial compressive and circumferential compressive value. This is mostly because that the
compressive stresses. However, it is worth noting that buckling mode of the shell specimens with circumferen-
not all axial and circumferential strain gages display tial weld is very complicated. It can be seen from

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Yu et al. 2387

Figure 8. Numerical results of C1L2 obtained using MGILRS method: (a) Mises stress contour after welding (MPa), (b) Mises stress
contour at buckling (MPa), (c) top view of buckling deformation, (d) axial stress of nodes on path 1 on outer surface, and (e)
circumferential stress of nodes on path 1 on outer surface.

Figures 4(a) and 5(a) that many concave and convex
zones are presented when the buckling occurs. As a
result, the strain gage located at the concave zone may
display compressive value, while the strain gage located
at the convex zone may display tensile value.
Distribution characteristics of welding residual stress
field of circumferential weld
As the real welding residual stress field of the shell
specimen is not known, a hypothetical welding residual
stress field constructed using ISFE method is used.
Therefore, the hypothetical welding residual stress
field is required to have the same stress distribution
characteristics with the real welding residual stress
field, although the magnitude may be different. By
this way, the effect of welding residual stress on axial
plastic buckling can be learned to some extent. Here,
C1L2 is taken as the basic case to explore the distribu-
tion characteristics of welding residual stress field of
circumferential weld. When MGILRS method is used,
the distribution of welding residual stress of nodes on
path 1 on the inner and outer surfaces is shown in
Figure 11.
It can be seen from Figure 11 that, (a) both the axial
and the circumferential stresses have significant sym-
metric distribution with respect to the circumferential
weld centerline; (b) on the inner surface around the
circumferential weld centerline, relatively large circum-
ferential tensile stress can be observed. On the outer
surface around the circumferential weld centerline, the
circumferential tensile stress is not large enough, which
is smaller than the yield strength of the base metal at
room temperature. Balancing the circumferential tensile
stress, two zones with circumferential compressive
stress are also generated, which nearly symmetrically

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2388
Figure 9. Numerical results of C2L3 obtained using MGI
method: (a) Mises stress contour at buckling (MPa), (b) top view
of buckling deformation, (c) axial stress of nodes on path 2 on
outer surface, and (d) circumferential stress of nodes on path 1
on outer surface.
distribute with respect to the circumferential weld cen-
terline; (c) axial stress distribution on the outer and
inner surfaces are nearly symmetrically distributed
with respect to the middle surface of the cylindrical
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Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 226(10)
shell. On the inner surface around the circumferential
weld centerline, relative large tensile axial stress existed
at the center of the circumferential weld. On the outer
surface around the circumferential weld centerline, rel-
ative large axial compressive stress exists at the center
of the circumferential weld. The above stress distribu-
tion characteristics obtained by ISFE method agree
well with those obtained by thermal elastic plastic
finite element method and test.27
Effect of welding residual stress on load–displace-
ment curve
Typical load–displacement curves calculated using
MIG and MIGLRS methods for C1L2 and C2L3 are
shown in Figure 12(a) and (b), respectively.
Figure 12 shows that, the load–displacement
curves obtained using MGILRS method are closer
to those obtained by test, as can be observed in
the rectangular box. It can be concluded that load–
displacement curve can be altered when the welding
residual stress exists.
Effect of welding residual stress on buckling
deformation
The number of buckling waveforms of circumferential
welds obtained by test and numerical methods is given
in Table 2.
It can be seen from Figures 4(a) and 5(a) that,
concave diamond buckling deformation around the
circumferential welds can be observed for the two speci-
mens with different pattern of welds. Figures 7(a), 8(b),
9(a), 10(b), and Table 2 show that the buckling defor-
mation obtained using MGILRS method is closer to
that obtained by test in terms of the number and the
uniformity of buckling waveforms of circumferential
welds. This illustrates that the number and the unifor-
mity of waveforms of circumferential welds can be
changed when the welding residual stress exists.
Effect of welding residual stress on axial plastic
buckling critical load
Axial buckling critical loads of C1L2 and C2L3
obtained by test and different numerical methods are
listed in Table 3. All data are made dimensionless with
the classic axial buckling load cl ¼ 0:605Et=R.
It can be seen from Table 3 that, (a) axial buckling
critical load obtained by test is about 30% of the classic
value; (b) compared with the gap between the results
obtained by test and MGI method, a smaller difference
could be found between the results calculated by test and
MGILRS method. This indicates that, (a) the effect of
patterned welds on plastic axial buckling critical load is
Yu et al. 2389

Figure 10. Numerical results of C2L3 obtained using MGILRS method: (a) Mises stress contour after welding (MPa), (b) Mises stress
contour at buckling (MPa), (c) top view of buckling deformation, (d) axial stress of nodes on path 2 on outer surface, and (e)
circumferential stress of nodes on path 1 on outer surface.

obvious; (b) axial plastic buckling critical load is decreased

to some extent when the welding residual stress exists.

Exploration of the reason why welding residual stress

Figure 11. Distribution of welding residual stress of nodes on
path1 on the inner and outer surfaces for C1L2 using MGILRS
method.
has an effect on axial plastic buckling
In this section, the reason why welding residual stress has
an influence on plastic buckling quantitatively is
explored from the point of stress variation. Combined
with stress change diagram of nodes on paths 1 and 2
(Figures 7(c) and (d), 8(d) and (e), 9(c) and (d), and
10(d) and (e)), four indicators of axial and circumferen-
tial stress changes on path 1 or path 2 on inner or outer
surface are shown in Tables 4 and 5, respectively, they
are: the width of axial compressive stress AC_w, the max-
imum axial compressive stress AC_max, the width of
circumferential tensile stress CT_w, and the maximum
circumferential tensile stress CT_max. AC_w and CT_w
are normalized by width of buckling zone.

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2390 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 226(10)

Table 4. Amplitude and width of axial and circumferential

stresses of buckling zone of paths 1 and 2 on the outer surface.

FEM FEM AC_max CC_max

model no. STEP AC_w CC_w (MPa) (MPa)

C1L2-MGI StI – – – –
StB 93% 100% 405.3 308.9
C1L2-MGILRS StI 100% 69% 191.1 170.8
StB 100% 100% 418.8 347.2
C2L3-MGI StI – – – –
StB 94% 100% 388.1 336.7
C2L3-MGILRS StI 100% 80% 213.1 183.2
StB 100% 100% 395.4 363.8
Note: FEM: finite element model.

Table 5. Amplitude and width of axial and circumferential

stresses of buckling zone of paths 1 and 2 on the inner surface.

FEM FEM AT_max CT_max

model no. STEP AT_w CT_w (MPa) (MPa)

C1L2-MGI StI – – – –
StB 85% 95% 389.0 257.1
C1L2-MGILRS StI 85% 60% 201.8 387.5
StB 75% 60% 400.8 341.9
Figure 12. Comparison of load–displacement curves obtained C2L3-MGI StI – – – –
using test and numerical methods: (a) C1L2 and (b) C2L3. StB 85% 95% 386.0 305.0
C2L3-MGILRS StI 95% 100% 223.2 387.6
StB 80% 100% 386.2 376.7
Note: FEM: finite element model.
Table 2. The number of buckling waveforms of circumferential
welds obtained by test and numerical methods. Tables 4 and 5 show that, (a) when MGI method is
used, axial and circumferential stresses of nodes on
Experimental MGI FEM MGILRS
Specimen no. result result FEM result
path 1 or path 2 on outer surface of cylindrical shells
at the buckling step (StB) are mainly compressive
C1L2 10 8 10 stress, while axial and circumferential stresses of
C2L3 10/10 11/11 11/11 nodes on path 1 or path 2 on the inner surface of cylin-
drical shells are mainly tensile stress; (b) when
Note: FEM: finite element model.
MGILRS method is used, the axial and circumferential
stresses of nodes on paths 1 and 2 have similar stress
distribution characteristics described in (a); (c) absolute
values of stress variation indicators of nodes on path 1
or path 2 on inner or outer surface at the buckling step
Table 3. Comparison of axial buckling critical load obtained by (StB) obtained by MGILRS method are larger than
numerical simulation and test. those obtained by MGI method. The above results
illustrate that, (a) buckling zone is in a ‘‘bending’’
Experimental MGI FEM MGILRS stress state under axial load; (b) buckling zone is also
Specimen no. result (%) result (%) FEM result (%)
in a ‘‘bending’’ stress state under the combined action
C1L2 27.84 36.60 30.43 of initial welding residual stress and axial load; (c) the
C2L3 24.82 31.63 27.20 ‘‘bending’’ stress state induced by axial load and weld-
ing residual stress is much serious compared with the
Note: FEM: finite element model.
‘‘bending’’ stress state induced by axial load only.

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Yu et al.
Conclusions
1. An experimental–numerical investigation of the
effect of welding residual stress on plastic buckling
of axially compressed cylindrical shells with pat-
terned welds is carried out. An axial buckling
experimental platform with automatic scanning
function of initial geometric imperfections is
made. Two cylindrical shell specimens with different
patterns of welds are made according to
manufacturing process used in engineering. Their
initial geometric imperfections, axial and circumfer-
ential strain, buckling load, etc., are experimentally
obtained. Two different numerical modeling meth-
ods (one includes welding residual stress while the
other not) are adopted and the validity is verified
by experiment.
2. When welding residual stress exists, it is found that,
load–displacement curve before buckling is altered,
axial plastic buckling critical load is decreased to
some extent, and the buckling deformation such as
the number and the uniformity of waveforms of cir-
cumferential welds are changed.
3. The reason why welding residual stress has an influ-
ence on plastic buckling was quantitatively analyzed
from the point of stress variation. It is found that,
the existence of welding residual stress made the
buckling zone of the specimen in a ‘‘bending’’
stress state, which is similar with that induced by
axial load; so, ‘‘bending’’ stress state of the buckling
zone caused by axial load is magnified when the
specimen is under the combined action of axial
load and welding residual stress.
4. The effect of welding residual stress on axial plas-
tic buckling of cylindrical shells was explored by
constructing a hypothetical welding residual stress
field. If the welding residual stress of the shell
specimen can be obtained by experiment (for
example, using X-ray diffraction residual stress
test method), how the welds and welding residual
stress affect buckling performance can be explored
more precisely. Furthermore, much effort is still
needed to explore how to predict the effect of
welding residual stress for more general loadings
and weld patterns.
Funding
This work was supported by National High Technology
Research and Development Program of China [grant
number 2009AA044803], Specialized Research Fund for
Doctoral Program of Higher education [grant number
20090101110051] and National Key Technologies Research
and Development Program of China [grant number
2011BAK06B02].
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2391
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