This slide gives a comparison between test and theory for the load-carrying capacity of uniformly axially compressed thin cylindrical shells. The normalized buckling load of the perfect shell is 1.0. Most of the test points fall far below 1.0, especially for shells with very high radius/thickness, a/h.
The solid curved line corresponds to a design recommendation in which about 95 per cent of the test results fall above the curve.
E is the Young’s modulus; 0.605Eh/a is the “classical” buckling stress of a perfect shell; sigmaexp is the buckling stress from tests.
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