Robust design of composite cylindrical shells under axial compression — Simulation and validation

Thin-walled shell structures like circular cylindrical shells are prone to buckling. Imperfections, which are defined as deviations from perfect shape and perfect loading distributions, can reduce the buckling load drastically compared to that of the perfect shell. Design criteria monographs like NASA-SP 8007 recommend that the buckling load of the perfect shell shall be reduced by using a knock-down factor. The existing knock-down factors are very conservative and do not account for the structural behaviour of composite shells. To determine an improved knock-down factor, several authors consider realistic shapes of shells in numerical simulations using probabilistic methods. Each manufacturing process causes a specific imperfection pattern; hence for this probabilistic approach a large number of test data is needed, which is often not available. Motivated by this lack of data, a new deterministic approach is presented for determining the lower bound of the buckling load of thin-walled cylindrical composite shells, which is derived from phenomenological test data. For the present test series, a single pre-buckle is induced by a radial perturbation load, before the axial displacement controlled loading starts. The deformations are measured using the prototype of a high-speed optical measurement system with a frequency up to 3680 Hz. The observed structural behaviour leads to a new reasonable lower bound of the buckling load. Based on test results, the numerical model is validated and the shell design is optimized by virtual testing. The results of test and numerical analysis indicate that this new approach has the potential to provide an improved and less conservative shell design in order to reduce weight and cost of thin-walled shell structures made from composite material.