Elastic-plastic collapse of non-uniform cylindrical shells subjected to uniform external pressure

The objective of this paper is to derive analytical solutions for the elastic buckling and plastic collapse pressures of a cylindrical shell with reduced thickness over part of its circumference. The section of reduced thickness is used to represent a corroded region in a pipe. The proposed solutions are extensions of Timoshenko's solutions for the elastic-plastic collapse of a linear elastic, perfectly plastic cylindrical shell subjected to uniform external pressure. A modified interaction formula for the fully plastic membrane forces and bending moments in the non-uniform cylinder has been proposed for plastic collapse. A parametric study shows that the elastic buckling pressure decreases smoothly with corrosion angle when the corrosion depth is less than 0.5t. When the corrosion depth is greater than 0.5t, the elastic buckling strength first decreases very rapidly with corrosion angle. Furthermore, the elastic buckling pressure decreases uniformly with corrosion depth when the corrosion angles are greater than 30°, while the elastic buckling strength decreases more rapidly at higher corrosion depths when corrosion angles are less than 30°. Another parametric study on a steel pipe shows that the initial and fully plastic yield pressures both decrease monotonically with corrosion depth for a given corrosion angle and imperfection.     

Elastic buckling of elliptical tubes subjected to generalised linearly varying stress distributions

The structural behaviour of elliptical hollow sections has been examined in previous studies under several loading conditions, including pure compression, pure bending and combined uniaxial bending and compression. This paper examines the elastic buckling response of elliptical hollow sections under any linearly varying in-plane loading conditions, including the most general case of combined compression and biaxial bending. An analytical method to predict the elastic buckling stress has been derived and validated against finite element results. The predictive model first identifies the location of the initiation of local buckling based on the applied stress distribution and the section geometry. The critical radius of curvature corresponding to this point is then introduced into the classical formula for predicting the elastic local buckling stress of a circular shell. The obtained analytical results are compared with results generated by means of finite element analysis. The comparisons between the analytical and numerical predictions of elastic buckling stress reveal disparities of less than 2.5% for thin shells and, following an approximate allowance for the influence of shear, less than 7.5% for thick shells.     

Behavior of thin-walled circular hollow section tubes subjected to bending

Thin-walled steel circular hollow sections (CHSs) are widely used in wind turbine towers. The tower tubes are mainly subjected to bending. There have been a few experimental studies on the bending behavior of thin-walled CHS steel tubes. This paper describes a series of bending tests to examine the influence of section slenderness on the inelastic and elastic bending properties of thin-walled CHS. In addition, the influence of stiffeners welded in the steel tube is considered. Sixteen bending tests were performed up to failure on different sizes of CHS with diameter-to-thickness ratio (D/t) varying from 75 to 300. The experimental results showed that the specimens with small diameter-to-thickness ratios failed by extensive plastification on the central part of the tube. With the increase of diameter-to-thickness ratio, the local buckling phenomena became more pronounced. The stiffeners in the steel tubes increased the load carrying capacity and improved the ductility of the specimens. The experimental results were compared with current design guidelines on thin-walled steel members in AISC-LRFD, AS4100 and European Specification. It was found that the test results agreed well with the results based on AS4100 design code.     

Lateral bracing of I-girder with corrugated webs under uniform bending

Lateral-torsional buckling may occur in an unrestrained beam where its compression flange is free to displace laterally and rotate. This paper presents the results of the theoretical and finite element analyses of the lateral-torsional buckling of I-girders with corrugated webs and lateral bracing, under uniform bending. It is well known that an elastic lateral brace restricts partially the lateral buckling of slender beams and increases the elastic buckling moment. However, a full study of the effect of lateral braces on lateral-torsional buckling has not been made especially for I-girder with corrugated webs. This paper develops a three-dimensional finite element model using ANSYS [User’s manual, version 10.0] for the lateral-torsional buckling analysis of I-girder with corrugated webs and uses it to investigate the effects of elastic lateral bracing stiffness on the critical moment of simply supported I-girders with corrugated webs under pure bending. It was found that for plastic and inelastic I-girder with corrugated webs, the effect of bracing initially is increased to some extent as the lateral unbraced length increases and then decreased until the beam behaves as an elastic beam. In other words, the effect of bracing depends not only on the stiffness of the restraint but also on the modified slenderness of the I-girder. Also, the results show that Winter’s simplified method to determine full brace requirements cannot be applied to I-girders with corrugated webs. Therefore, a general equation is proposed to determine the value of optimum stiffness (K_opt) in terms of the I-girder’s slenderness.     

钢管混凝土圆拱的面内承载力分析

迄今为止,全世界已有400多座钢管混凝土拱桥。然而,有关钢管混凝土拱面内承载力的设计规范仍没有。目前,钢管混凝土拱的设计广泛采用钢筋混凝土及预应力混凝土拱的面内承载力设计方法。这样钢管混凝土拱可认为受轴压或偏压作用,相当于钢管混凝土柱。将钢管混凝土柱的经典屈曲荷载作为钢管混凝土拱的参考弹性屈曲荷载。然而,在横向荷载作用下,钢管混凝土拱的面内弹性屈曲性能与轴压下的钢管混凝土柱完全不同,尤其是对于薄壁钢管混凝土拱。另外,与轴压或偏压下钢管混凝土柱不同,钢管混凝土拱在屈曲之前就发生非线性弯曲和横向变形,这严重影响钢管混凝土拱的承载力。因此,钢管混凝土面内承载力的设计方法是否正确值得商榷。提出与现有钢结构设计规范基本一致的钢管混凝土圆拱承载力设计方法,并同时考虑了几何非线性和材料非线性的影响。提出均匀轴压下钢管混凝土拱的面内承载力设计方程,及弯矩和轴压共同作用下钢管混凝土拱面内承载力验算的下限设计方程。     

Dynamic buckling of anchored steel tanks subjected to horizontal earthquake excitation

We investigate dynamic buckling of aboveground steel tanks with conical roofs and anchored to the foundation, subjected to horizontal components of real earthquake records. The study attempts to estimate the critical horizontal peak ground acceleration (Critical PGA), which induces elastic buckling at the top of the cylindrical shell, for the impulsive hydrodynamic response of the tank-liquid system. Finite elements models of three cone roof tanks with height to diameter ratios (H/D) of 0.40, 0.63 and 0.95 and with a liquid level of 90% of the height of the cylinder were used in this study. The tank models were subjected to accelerograms recorded during the 1986 El Salvador and 1966 Parkfield earthquakes, and dynamic buckling computations (including material and geometric non-linearity) were carried out using the finite element package ABAQUS. For the El Salvador accelerogram, the critical PGA for buckling at the top of the cylindrical shell decreased with the H/D ratio of the tank, while similar critical PGAs regardless of the H/D ratio were obtained for the tanks subjected to the Parkfield accelerogram. The elastic buckling at the top occurred as a critical state for the medium height and tallest models regardless of the accelerogram considered, because plasticity was reached for a PGA larger than the critical PGA. For the shortest model (H/D=0.40), depending on the accelerogram considered, plasticity was reached at the shell before buckling at the top of the shell.     

Behavior of thin-walled circular hollow section stub columns under axial compression

Thin-walled steel circular hollow section (CHS) is widely used in wind turbine towers, where the tube is subjected to axial load combined with bending moment. Understanding the behavior of axially loaded thin-walled tubes with large diameter-to-thickness (D/t) ratios is crucial for the design of such structures. To investigate the behavior of axially loaded thin-walled circular hollow section steel tubes, 16 stub columns were tested with the D/t ratio ranging from 75 to 300. The experimental results showed that the compressive strength decreased sharply with the increase of the D/t ratio. The experimental result indicated that the tubes with smaller D/t ratios failed with outward deformation without visible local buckling. With the increase of the D/t ratio, local buckling appeared at the peak load. The finite element method was used to model the behavior of axially loaded stub columns. The experimental results were used to validate the accuracy of the finite element results. Based on the finite element model, the influences of the D/t ratio, the initial geometric deformation and the initial residual stress were analyzed. Design guidelines in Eurocode3, AISC-LRFD, AS4100 and S16-9 on thin-walled steel members were used to compare with the experimental and calculated results. Among them, the results based on AS4100 were the closest to the experimental results.     

Experiments on dented cylindrical shells under peripheral pressure

In spite of numerous papers in the literature on the buckling behavior of cylindrical shell structures, the effect of local large imperfections caused by physical contacts has not been exhaustively examined yet. To this end, this paper reports on an experimental program on the buckling and post-buckling response of thin cylindrical shells with local dent imperfections under uniform external pressure. The results of this study can be used in practical structures with similar geometric features, i.e. D/t ratio.     

Experimental collapse of thin cylindrical shells submitted to internal pressure and pure bending

A thin-walled pressurised cylindrical shell is sensitive to buckling phenomena when it experiences locally a compressive stress. It is often considered that its behaviour under bending is rather similar to pure compression, but very few are the experimental investigations that precise the real behaviour of a thin pressurised cylinder submitted to a bending load. A large amount of experimental results is presented here, obtained on thin shells (550<R/t<1450) of moderate length (L/R≈2). The evolution of the cylinders' behaviour that has been recorded when internal pressure increases is outlined. It is shown that one must distinguish between local buckling and global collapse of the structure. A comparison of our experimental data to design recommendations given by two standards (NASA SP8007 and Eurocode 3) is finally achieved, putting in advance safety margins provided by these codes.     

Neural networks for modelling ultimate pure bending of steel circular tubes

The behaviour of steel circular tubes under pure bending is complex and highly nonlinear. The literature has a number of solutions to predict the response of steel circular tubes under pure bending; however, most of these solutions are complicated and difficult to use in routine design practice. In this paper, the feasibility of using artificial neural networks (ANNs) for developing more accurate and simple-to-use models for predicting the ultimate pure bending of steel circular tubes is investigated. The data used to calibrate and validate the ANN models are obtained from the literature and comprise a series of 49 pure bending tests conducted on fabricated steel circular tubes and 55 tests carried out on cold-formed tubes. Multilayer feed-forward neural networks that are trained with the back-propagation algorithm are constructed using four design parameters (i.e. tube thickness, tube diameter, yield strength of steel and modulus of elasticity of steel) as network inputs and the ultimate pure bending as the only output. A sensitivity analysis is conducted on the ANN models to investigate the generalization ability (robustness) of the developed models, and predictions from the ANN models are compared with those obtained from most available codes and standards. To facilitate the use of the developed ANN models, they are translated into design equations suitable for spreadsheet programming or hand calculations. The results indicate that ANNs are capable of predicting the ultimate bending capacity of steel circular tubes with a high degree of accuracy, and outperform most available codes and standards.     

Elephant's foot buckling in pressurised cylindrical shells

Metal cylindrical bins, silos and tanks are thin shell structures subject to internal pressure from stored materials together with axial compression from the frictional drag of stored materials on the walls and horizontal loads. The governing failure mode is frequently buckling under axial compression. The internal pressure exerted by the stored fluids or solids can significantly enhance the buckling strength, but high internal pressures lead to severe local bending near the base. Local yielding then precipitates an early elastic‐plastic buckling failure. This failure mode, commonly known as “elephant's foot buckling”, has received relatively little attention to date and until recently was often ignored in tank and silo design. This problem is an unusual buckling condition, because it involves very high tensile stresses in one direction, coupled with rather small compressive stresses in the orthogonal direction. Thus, although it is a buckling failure involving considerable plasticity, it occurs at low buckling stresses and under conditions that appear to be classically “slender”. The normal concatenation of “slender” with “elastic” in buckling formulations does not apply at all here. This paper describes alternative approaches to the formulation of design rules for the elastic‐plastic instability and collapse of axially‐loaded internally‐pressurised thin cylindrical shells adjacent to the base support. The differences between the different approaches arise from different conceptual models for the manner in which an elastic‐plastic slender structure instability should be treated.     

Parametric study on buckling behaviour of dented short carbon steel cylindrical shell subjected to uniform axial compression

Generally, thin cylindrical shells are susceptible for geometrical imperfections like non-circularity, non-cylindricity, dents, swellings, etc. All these geometrical imperfections decrease the static buckling strength of thin cylindrical shells, but in this paper only effect of a dent on strength of a short (Lc/Rc∼1, Rc/t=117, 175, 280) cylindrical shell is considered for analysis. The dent is modeled on the FE surface of perfect cylindrical shell for different angles of inclination and sizes at half the height of cylindrical shell. The cylindrical shells with a dent are analyzed using non-linear static buckling analysis. From the results it is found that in case of shorter dents, size and angle of inclination of dents do not have much effect on static buckling strength of thin cylindrical shells, whereas in the case of long dents, size and angle of inclination of dents have significant effect. But both short and long dents reduce the static buckling strength drastically. It is also found that the reduction in buckling strength of thin cylindrical shell with a dent of same size and orientation increases with increase in shell thickness.     

Investigation of the buckling behavior of conical shells under weld-induced imperfections

The initial depression of shell skins is usually created through various panel processes such as rolling or welding. It is important to create some basic design regulations associated with the existing codes. A longitudinal imperfection caused by the continuous welding of a panel's edge to form a cone is the most important case in this context. The present paper discusses 14 laboratory specimens in 2 groups, labeled Shallow Conical Caps (SCC) and Deep Conical Caps (DCC), loaded under uniform hydrostatic pressure. The samples were modified to include either 1 or 2 line imperfections with amplitudes of 1t, 2t and 3t in depth (t the thickness of conical shell). The results presented here are in general agreement with international codes as well as theories concerning initial and overall buckling and collapse.     

Bracing requirements for inelastic castellated beams

Lateral-torsional buckling can be avoided by properly spaced and designed lateral bracing. Bracings are usually assumed to be elastic, and so may be characterized by their elastic stiffnesses. It is well known that an elastic lateral brace restricts partially the lateral buckling of slender beams and increases the elastic buckling moment. However, a full study of the effect of lateral braces on inelastic buckling has not been made especially for castellated beams, and it is not known whether the limiting stiffness for elastic buckling can be applied to castellated beams that buckle inelastically. This paper develops a three dimensional (3-D) finite-element model using a finite-element program and uses it to investigate the effect of elastic lateral bracing stiffness on the inelastic flexural-torsional buckling of simply supported castellated beams with an elastic lateral restraint under pure bending. It was found that for inelastic castellated beams, the effect of bracing initially is increased to some extent as the lateral unbraced length increases and then decreased until the beam behaves as an elastic beam. In other words, the effect of bracing depends not only on the stiffness of the restraint but also on the modified slenderness of the beam. Also, the results show that Winter’s simplified method to determine full brace requirements cannot be applied to inelastic castellated beams. Therefore, a general equation is proposed to determine the value of optimum stiffness in terms of the beam’s slenderness, applicable to all castellated beams under pure bending.     

Buckling strength of cylindrical steel tanks under harmonic settlement

Large vertical cylindrical steel tanks for bulk and fluid storage are usually constructed in soft foundations, so it is not surprising that tank foundations are susceptible to various types of settlement beneath the tank wall, which is usually decomposed as a Fourier series in harmonics. In this paper, buckling strength of cylindrical fixed-roof steel storage tanks under harmonic settlement is investigated through great deal of numerical analyses by the FE computer package ANSYS. Three types of buckling analyses are carried out which are the LBA, GNA, GNIA proposed also by Eurocode 3. The results show that the equilibrium path from both GNA and GNIA is highly nonlinear, and it seems ungrounded to establish design criterion on the principle of superposition based on the linear elastic theory. The influences of the harmonic wave number n, the radius-to-thickness ratio r/t, the height-to-radius ratio h/r, and the geometric imperfection δ₀/t on the buckling strength of the storage tanks are mainly investigated. The ultimate harmonic settlements for various tank geometries are addressed and plotted in each analysis together with the buckling modes. The buckling modes from GNA and GNIA agree well with the lowest linear bifurcation buckling modes from LBA, and take mainly two types of deformations: shearing buckling extending throughout the entire height for the lower wave number n=2–4 and the elephant's foot failure occurring at the upward settlement zone caused by the meridional compression for the higher wave number n>4. It is also indicated from the results that both the ultimate harmonic settlement and the buckling mode of the tank are closely correlative with the geometric parameters: the wave number n, the radius-to-thickness ratio r/t, the height-to-radius ratio h/r, and the initial geometric imperfection δ₀/t.     

A neural network based closed-form solution for the distortional buckling of elliptical tubes

Following the Eurocode 3 philosophy, it is expected that the design of elliptical hollow section (EHS) tubes will be based on the slenderness concept, which requires the calculation of the EHS critical stress. The critical stress of an EHS tube under compression may be associated with local buckling, distortional buckling or flexural buckling. The complexity in deriving analytical expressions for distortional critical stress from classical shell theories, led us to apply Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). This paper presents closed-form expressions to calculate the distortional critical stress and half-wave length of EHS tubes under compression, using ANN. Almost 400 EHS geometries are used and based solely on three parameters: the outer EHS dimensions (A and B) and its thickness (t). Two architectures are shown to be successful. They are tested for several statistical parameters and proven to be very well behaved. Finally, some simple illustrative examples are shown and final remarks are drawn concerning the accuracy of the closed-formed formulas.     

The effects of long term uniform corrosion on the buckling of ground based steel tanks under seismic loading

Material degradation due to corrosion significantly alters the seismic response of ground-based cylindrical steel storage tanks. A numerical study is conducted to investigate the effects of internal shell corrosion on the dynamic buckling of three cone roof ground-based, steel cylindrical tanks with height to diameter ratios (H/D) of 0.40, 0.63 and 0.95, subjected to horizontal seismic base excitations. Internal corrosion is considered as a time dependent uniform thinning of the wall at the upper and the lower parts of the tank being in contact with, respectively, atmospheric oxygen and acid gases and residual water. Detailed numerical models of the tank–liquid systems at different stages of corrosion degradation are subjected to two representing accelerograms and for each model the critical peak ground acceleration (PGA) for dynamic buckling of the shell and its associated mode of failure are evaluated. It is found that in all three tanks, the critical PGA is markedly reduced with thinning of the shell, irrespective of the type of ground input. The buckling mode of failure of the tanks also changed from an elastic diamond-shaped failure at the top of the shell to an elasto-plastic elephant foot type failure near the base, after 10 years for the shorter tanks (H/D=0.4 and 0.63) and after 15 years for the tallest tank. The effects of uniform corrosion degradation on the critical buckling load of the tanks were found to be such that after 20 years of thinning due to corrosion, the static loading alone was responsible for the elephant foot buckling of the shell.     

Out-of-plane elastic buckling load and strength design of space truss arch with a rectangular section

The out-of-plane stability of the two-hinged space truss circular arch with a rectangular section is theoretically and numerically investigated in this paper. Firstly, the flexural stiffness and torsional stiffness of space truss arches are deduced. The calculation formula of out-of-plane elastic buckling loads of the space truss arch is derived based on the classical solution of out-of-plane flexural-torsional buckling loads of the solid web arch. However, since the classical solution cannot be used for the calculation of the arch with a small rise-span ratio, the formula for out-of-plane elastic buckling loads of space truss arches subjected to end bending moments is modified. Numerical research of the out-of-plane stability of space truss arches under different load cases shows that the theoretical formula proposed in this paper has good accuracy. Secondly, the design formulas to predict the out-of-plane elastoplastic stability strength of space truss arches subjected to the end bending moment and radial uniform load are presented through introducing a normalized slenderness ratio. By assuming that all components of space truss circular arches bear only axial force, the design formulas to prevent the local buckling of chord and transverse tubes are deduced. Finally, the bearing capacity design equations of space truss arches are proposed under vertical uniform load.     

基于广义梁理论的薄壁构件屈曲模态有限元分析

提出基于广义梁理论(GBT)的新方法,将各向同性薄壁构件通过壳体有限元分析方法(FEA)获得的弹性屈曲模态分解成整体、畸变和局部屈曲模态。其创新之处在于仅使用GBT截面变形模态,而非构件变形模态。该方法能够单独计算各屈曲模态,更好地了解各构件的后屈曲特性和强度曲线。根据GBT的经典假设,忽略剪切应变和横向张力。通过有限元方法得到的各模态与经典GBT计算结果一致。