Inelastic behaviour and algebraic characterisation of cylindrical shells

Abstract

Today, long thin-walled cylindrical metallic shells are widely used in various engineering fields. Their structural behaviour under fundamental loading conditions, including compression, bending, shear, and combined compression-bending, is often complex due to geometric and material nonlinearities. In practice, multiple structural responses, including imperfection sensitivity, plastic collapse, second-order displacement effects, cross-sectional ovalisation, and local or global buckling, may develop and interact under applied loading, which brings researchers considerable difficulty in analysing theoretically and numerically.

The existing design standards commonly used, such as BS EN 1993-1-6, AISC 360-22, CSA S16-24, AS/NZS 1163, and GB/T 6728, remain incomplete in providing comprehensive and accurate design guidance for long cylindrical shells. To the best of our knowledge, the performance of stocky cylindrical shells under various conditions has been extensively investigated in the available literature. For long cylindrical shells, the fundamental loading cases, including compression and bending, have been well addressed and are particularly characterised by the Reference Resistance Design (RRD) method, a semi-empirical approach based on numerical investigations. This method has since been incorporated into Eurocode 3. However, for more complicated cases, such as combined bending and compression or cantilevers with tip loads, while the RRD method can algebraically address these, numerous numerical studies based on Geometric and Material Imperfection Nonlinear Analysis (GMNIA) are required to determine the corresponding coefficients.

This dissertation investigates the inelastic behaviour of cylindrical shells under combined bending and compression, and cantilever cylindrical shells under transverse tip loading. A series of comprehensive finite element modelling programmes are developed to capture the nonlinear structural responses under these loading conditions. Based on the numerical results, algebraic prediction formulas are proposed, which may serve as design guidelines for long cylindrical shell structures within the framework of Eurocode 3 Part 1-6.

Date of Award	24 Jun 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Mark Evernden (Supervisor), Antony Darby (Supervisor), Loizos Pelecanos (Supervisor) & Jie Wang (Supervisor)