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Shallow part of spherical shell under external pressure

This and the next 3 images are from:

H.N.R. Wagner, C. Huehne and S. Niemann (Institute for Composite Structures and Adaptive Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Lilienthalplatz 7, 38108 Braunschweig, Germany),

“Robust knockdown factors for the design of spherical shells under external pressure: Development and validation”, International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, Vol. 141, pp 58-77, June 2018

ABSTRACT: In this paper a physically based and deterministic design procedure for spherical shells under external pressure is introduced. Within the new design concept the membrane energy of a sphere is incrementally reduced by means of perturbation cutouts, until a bending energy dominate state is identified. The threshold between membrane energy state and bending energy state represents a robust plateau for the buckling pressure.
A comprehensive numerical investigation was performed in order to study the influence of radius-to-thickness ratio (R/t) as well as the dome height-to-base radius ratio (H/r). The results verify that both geometric properties ratios significantly influence the lower-bound buckling pressure, especially if plastic buckling occurs.
Improved shell buckling design factors are given in the form of an simple analytic equation. The corresponding threshold KDFs were validated with a large number of buckling experiments and deliver much higher KDFs than currently used empirical guidelines.
Based on the new design criterion lower-bound estimation for the buckling pressure of a tori-spherical bulkhead and the inner dome of the cryogenic upper stage ESC-A from the European space launch-vehicle Ariane 5 are determined.

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