Evaluation of FEM instability loads of stiffened cylindrical shells and comparison them with analytical results

The instability behavior of stiffened cylindrical shells and determination of the corresponding buckling loads under axial compression, according to the extended range of structural applications of them in various fields of engineering, has been paid a lot of attention from researchers and extensive amount of studies have been performed on it so far. Because of a lack of the general closed form responses due to complexity of the governing equations and analyses process, using the FE software codes as the main technique of the stiffened shell's buckling load determination is inevitable. Accordingly the present paper has been studied the reinforcement effects of ring and stringer and also compared the buckling loads which are evaluated by analysis of the FE numerical modeling in ABAQUS software with instability results that obtained from a general analytical equation derived by other references via applying the simplifying assumptions to the governing equations. Furthermore an attempt has been performed for extraction of the finite element instability load vs. structure reinforcement correspondence that enables the designers to accurately determine the instability load of structure for other values of structure's stiffening volume without performing additional FE analyses which are much more expensive in term of computer time.