Buckling Behaviour of Dented Short Cylindrical Shells Retrofitted with CFRP

Abstract

Thin-walled shell structures are characterised by a lightweight structural form with high strength. The importance of using cylinders and cones has long been known to engineers and designers in various engineering disciplines and they are widely used in shell form. In this work, the buckling and post-buckling behaviour of thin-walled cylindrical shells with geometric imperfections was investigated under vacuum-type pressure loads. Ten shell models with dents of two depths and lengths were designed for experimental tests: the dents were the thickness or twice the thickness of the shell, while their lengths were half or one-third of the height of the model. Carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) was used to retrofit some of the dented models. Test results from the CFRP specimens and the non-CFRP specimens were then compared with each other and with theoretical calculations.