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load-deflection curves of perfect and imperfect very thin shells

This slide shows the behavior of a very thin cylindrical shell under uniform axial compression or a very thin spherical shell under uniform external pressure.

In this case there is a dramatic effect of an initial imperfection on the load-carrying capacity of the shell.

[rho(crit) is the buckling load factor of the perfect shell with no pre-buckling edge effect, that is, no local prebuckling bending in the neighborhood of the edge or edges. (The dashed line should be placed a little bit higher, to coincide with the buckling parameter, rho, equals unity, not rho = 0.97 or thereabouts.)]

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