Elastic buckling of vertical cantilevered cylinders

The paper details numerical and experimental study on elastic buckling of cylindrical shells caused by external pressure, a horizontal edge force and combined action of both. The following three geometries of vertical cylinders are considered: (i) circular cylinders, (ii) concentric circular cylinders, and (iii) cylinders with elliptical cross-section. In total, test results on nineteen shells are given. The experimental data is benchmarked against the FE predictions of buckling loads. Good agreement has been obtained between the experimental results and numerical predictions for all tested shells except for buckling of the concentric cylinders loaded by the horizontal edge force. Possible reasons for discrepancies are discussed. The paper offers insight into buckling performance of vertical cylinders subjected to combined loading, and in the case of concentric cylinders, into the interaction between the inner and outer shells. Some of the interaction features, not immediately obvious, are discussed.