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to another as the buckling progresses into the postbuckling region (e.g. Riks et al. 1996). This rich potential for many different modes of buckling is also implicated in the sensitivity of the buckling strength to geometric imperfections. Further, the practice, common in other structural forms (e.g. beams and columns), of adding stiffeners to force the structure from one buckling mode into another with a higher strength, is generally rather ineffective for axially compressed cylinders. Not only is the shell strength seriously affected by the amplitude and form of geometric imperfections in its surface, but the postbuckling path is usually dramatically weakening in character. As a result, buckling is commonly a sudden, dramatic, unpredictable event leading to a substantial loss of load-carrying capacity. As a structural failure mode, it deserves special attention in design and a certain caution if stresses approaching a potential buckling condition may occur. Typical geometries of thin compressed shells The thin compressed cylinders described in this chapter have a radius-to-thickness ratio (r/t) in the range 1002000, and a length such that most buckles occupy only a small part of the distance between boundaries, rings or changes of plate thickness. The thickest of these cylinders (100 < r/t < 500) are generally required in limited zones and for special loading or stress concentration reasons. Most storage containers subject to sensibly uniform axial compression have wall thicknesses in the range 500 < r/t < 2000. Most civil engineering cylindrical shells under axial compression fall into the category of medium length cylinders: that is; they are so long that the end boundary conditions do not play a strong role, and so short that the buckling load is far below the Euler load for buckling as a column. The buckling is often well in the elastic range of behaviour, so that the buckling strength is unaffected by the material strength.

Bifurcation and postbuckling in perfect cylinders

Classical elastic buckling If a geometrically perfect thin elastic cylinder is axially compressed under uniform compression, the loadend shortening relationship is typically as shown in Fig. 2.5. A very linear prebuckling path (with little for the experimentalist to observe) is suddenly terminated as the shell bifurcates into a non-symmetric mode (Fig. 2.6(b)), with several full waves of buckling mode around the circumference, and usually several waves up the height. At buckling, the load falls very rapidly, and the cylinder actually increases in length (Fig. 2.5) as the displacements normal to the surface grow. As the load falls (Fig. 2.5), bifurcation after bifurcation occurs as the mode switches from one circumferential wave number n to another in dynamic jumps, which are particularly difcult to follow with static structural calculations (Riks et al. 1996). The bifurcation load is usually slightly lower than