Cylindrical shells under uniform external pressure

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EUROCODE 3, part 1-6, based on the stressstrain relation of structural steel. Since stainless steel has a different material law the results are not directly transferable. Further investigations for stainless steel are under way (Hautala and Schmidt 1998).

Cylinders with stepped wall thickness

Form of shells Cylindrical shells with stepped wall thickness are used for vertical tanks and silos, where the increase of internal lling pressure from top to bottom results in an increase in wall thickness. It is usually built up by individual courses (or strakes) of constant wall thickness varying differently over the length of the cylinder in relation to the chosen material strength. In the top region of the shell the wall thickness is controlled by the buckling phenomenon leading to the specication of a minimum wall thickness in design codes; while in the bottom region the design is determined by the internal pressure leading frequently to the use of material of higher strength or thicker plates. The external pressure is normally caused by under-pressure, often controlled by safety valves, or by wind pressure and has a magnitude in the range of 1 kN/m2 or less. Shell buckling, therefore, is normally an additional check for an already designed shell. It is frequently combined with the axial compression due to the roof load. The shells under consideration fall into the range of medium-length cylinders; therefore, this chapter is only dealing with this type of solutions. The connections between the courses of the wall may be made by welding or by bolting, the latter resulting in an overlap of the plates. The latter inuence may be signicant for buckling in axial compression; however, for the given case of external pressure it may be ignored. In the following, the boundary conditions are restricted to the classical case of both ends radially supported and axially free (w = nx = 0), which is the usual condition in containments.

Theoretical solution The buckling behaviour of shells with variable wall thickness is dominated by the thin upper courses, while the lower, thicker ones although weakened in their stiffness by the external pressure execute a restraining effect on the upper courses. As explained above, the destabilising effect of the thin courses may be analytically treated like the vibration of ctitious beams; and the same idea leads to beams on elastic bedding for the thick, stabilising courses. This follows from the solution of the semi-membrane theory, which results in the following differential equation