Numerical Simulation Analysis on Buckling Load of Large Combined Cylindrical Shells

To comply with the uniform-strength theory, almost all large tanks are made by welding unequal-thickness cylindrical shell courses together. This structure can be considered as a kind of geometry imperfection of tank walls, which has a great influence on buckling behavior and critical load of tank walls. To obtain the related critical buckling load and to verify the effect regularity on bulking due to hoop stress in various combined unequal-thickness cylindrical shells, the numerical simulation was adopted to analyze the buckling behavior with different loads. The results show that the characteristic factors of unequal-thickness structure can reduce the critical buckling load significantly, such factors as shell layers and the difference in thickness of adjacent shell courses are the most dominant.