Investigation of Axial to Lateral Load ratio on the Buckling of Thin Orthotropic Cylindrical Shells

Buckling analysis of thin cylindrical shells is very important due to their production process. Usually longitudinal and transversal stiffeners are used to increase the buckling stiffness. In this paper, considering a thin cylindrical shell with longitudinal and transversal ribs subjected to axial force and lateral pressure, the influence of different aspect of axial force to lateral pressure on buckling load is investigated for different ratios such as thickness to radius and length to radius. The analytical results based on Donnell’s classical linear stability equations for anisotropic cylindrical shells are compared with FEM results of ANSYS software. The results show that the analytical method of Donnell can be used for special aspect ratios. Furthermore, by increasing the axial to lateral load ratio, the axial buckling load is increased for most of the aspect ratios, while the lateral buckling load decreases.