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EXTERNAL PRESSURE AND SECTIONAL BEHAVIOR

OF FABRICATED TUBES"
Discussion by Krishnaiyengar Rajagopalan4

The authors m u s t be c o m m e n d e d on their elegant paper which w o u l d

be useful in the design of offshore platform legs. The effect of external
pressure on the sectional behavior of tubes h a s b e e n thoroughly treated
in the paper. In the characterization of the effect of circumferential im-
perfections, the authors have adopted the formula for the buckling pres-
sure of a long unstiffened cylindrical shell. This formula is valid for a
shell with free edges, or, if the edges are not free, the length of the shell
must be more t h a n 20 times the diameter. The writer w o n d e r s w h e t h e r
these restrictions are satisfied by the short tube ("can") considered b y
the authors. The buckling of short tubes is axisymmetric in nature, but
short tubes can fail by asymmetric (lobar) buckling. The buckling pres-
sure is influenced by t h e b o u n d a r y conditions at the edges. Finite ele-
ment analysis can be u s e d to quantify the buckling pressure (12).

APPENDIX.—REFERENCE

12. Rajagopalan, K., and Ganapathy Chettiar, C , "Application of the Finite Ele-
ment Method to the Inters tiffener Buckling in Submersible Cylindrical
Hulls," Journal of Ship Research.

Closure by Shouji Toma,5 Wai F. Chen, 6 M. ASCE, and Lyle D. Finn7

The writers would like to thank Rajagopalan for his interest in the
paper and for his comments on the influence of b o u n d a r y conditions at
the ends of a " c a n " on the buckling pressure of a short tube.
In the present work, the effects of hydrostatic pressure, residual
stresses, a n d geometrical imperfections, such as out-of-roundness a n d
out-of-straightness on the load-carrying capacity of tubular m e m b e r s ,
are investigated from the standpoint of theory of beam-column (3). Shell
theory related to local buckling is not considered. As reported in Ref.
1, two types of failure m o d e s w e r e observed in the 10 full-size column
"January, 1982, by Shouji Toma, Wai F. Chen, and Lyle D. Finn (Proc. Paper
16797).
4
Sci., Struct. Engrg. Research Center, Madras 600113, India.
5
Assoc. Prof, of Civ. Engrg. Faculty of Engrg., Hokkaigakuen Univ., W-ll, S-
26, Chuouku, Sapporo, 064, Japan.
6
Prof. and Head of Struct. Engrg., School of Civ. Engrg., West Lafayette, Ind.
7
Sr. Research Specialist, Offshore Struct. Div., Exxon Production Research Co.,
Houston, Tex.
594

J. Struct. Eng. 1983.109:594-594.