ABSTRACT
Fiber reinforced plastic vessels are subjected to two types of stability problems: vacuum loading (or external pressure) and axial load. Many vessels are designed to contain vacuum. In application such as highway tankers, transfer of liquid content from one vessel to the next can be done by initially creating a vacuum in the receiving vessel. The vacuum in this case can be up to full vacuum. In processing vessels, usually partial vacuum is applied. For vessels subjected to vacuum loading (or under external presure loading conditions), two design calculations have to be performed. One is stress calculations. This can be done following the procedure outlined in Chapter 4. The other is the buckling problem which will be treated in this chapter.
