ABSTRACT
In a more recent research program carried out by Hübner et al. (2006), the buckling behavior of large steel cylinders with patterned welds was investigated. The results of a series of finite element buckling analyses of a typical steel cylinder with such simulated welding effects are presented and discussed, leading to a number of significant conclusions, one of which is that a weld depression pattern, produced using the present weld simulation method, offers a suitable equivalent imperfection form to be applied in nonlinear analysis of shells in stability design, as it leads to buckling loads in close agreement with predictions by the new European code for steel shell structures. Also, in this research all possible imperfections with patterned welds and the influence of imperfection amplitudes have been investigated. But, the interaction effects of circumferential imperfections on each other were not considered (Hübner et al. 2006).
