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axial compressive or shear stresses in the case of cylindrical shells under bending and transverse shear, see Chapters 8 and 9 of this book then it is dispensable to perform a buckling interaction check. But in general, the locations of peak stresses are, to a certain extent, variable due to simplifying assumptions for the load induction and to approximative calculation methods. Furthermore, it is a characteristic of shell buckling phenomena that after buckling a large part of the shell wall is deformed, including areas of different stress peaks even if they are located at a large distance from each other. Thus, it is generally not overconservative to perform a buckling design check with the maximum values of the individual membrane stress components present under an acting load combination even if they do not occur at the same location. The buckling design formulas for interactive loading given in design standards are often deduced from a few sets of test results and are therefore of a comparatively simple nature, in many cases not covering effects due to inelastic material behaviour in a biaxial stress state. Furthermore, while the code predictions for fundamental loads are quite similar, they differ considerably for the interactive buckling. This chapter provides a comprehensive picture of the behaviour of cylindrical steel shells under combined loading. Theoretical as well as experimental results have been collected to provide insight into interactive buckling and to put design recommendations forward.

Cylindrical shells under fundamental loads

Axial compression Theoretical linear analyses of the elastic buckling of axially compressed perfect cylindrical shells show three different regions (e.g. Flgge 1973): Very short shells buckle, theoretically, like a plate strip of innite length. Cylinders of medium length buckle at a buckling stress that depends mainly on the ratio r/t with a multi-modal buckling pattern, that is, there are many eigenmodes with eigenvalues near the lowest critical load. Different boundary conditions have only a small inuence on the buckling load except when the circumferential restraint is absent. Most engineering applications fall into this range. Very long cylinders fail by column buckling.

Boundary conditions (BCs) different to pure membrane BCs cause geometrically nonlinear prebuckling bending deformations. Thus, the calculated buckling loads of perfect elastic shells reduce to about 90% (clamped) and 85% (simply supported) of the classical critical buckling load (e.g. Almroth 1966; Yamaki 1984). When the r/t ratio becomes sufciently small, the theoretical buckling stress of the elastic perfect cylinder is higher than its yield strength when made of steel.