Singular perturbation analysis of the buckling of circular cylindrical shells

This paper deals with the buckling of thin cylindrical shells with very large Batdorf parameters under external pressure. We first perform a simplified analysis from which we obtain explicit formulae for the critical load. An asymptotic analysis is carried out with a view to determining the effects of the boundary conditions on the critical loads and buckling shapes. The inverse of the Batdorf parameter is the convenient small parameter of the analysis. Among the whole set of boundary conditions, the axial boundary conditions are found to be have crucially important at the first order. This analysis also shows the existence of boundary layers in which the remaining boundary conditions are only significant at the second order, at the very most.