ABSTRACT
The buckling of thin metallic shells has been studied scientifically since the beginning of the twentieth century. Both physical experiments and theoretical investigations have shown that the buckling strength of these thin shell structures is very sensitive to geometric imperfections, as a result of which extensive research has been conducted on this topic ever since. Among the different forms that a thin shell structure can take, the cylindrical shell is the most common: cylinders are widely used in aircraft, pressure vessels, and as storage structures for many different kind of materials (water, petroleum, agricultural and mining products etc.) as tanks and silos. For a thin cylindrical shell under axial compression, Rotter & Teng (1989) and Rotter (1996, 2004) showed that a local axisymmetric imperfection is a practically probable form that leads to dramatic reductions in the buckling strength, which are generally more pronounced than those for non-symmetric imperfections.
