Buckling of intermediate ring supported cylindrical shells under axial compression

This paper is concerned with the elastic buckling of axially compressed, circular cylindrical shells with intermediate ring supports. The simple Timoshenko thin shell theory and the more sophisticated Flügge thin shell theory have been adopted in the modeling of the cylindrical shells. We used these two representative theories to examine the sensitivity of the buckling solutions to the different degree of approximations made in shell theories. By dividing the shell into segments at the locations of the ring supports, the state-space technique is employed to derive the solutions for each shell segment and the domain decomposition method utilized to impose the equilibrium and compatibility conditions at the interfaces of the shell segments. First-known exact buckling factors are obtained for cylindrical shells of one and multiple intermediate ring supports and various combinations of boundary conditions. Comparison studies are carried out against benchmark solutions and independent numerical results from ANSYS and p-Ritz analyses. The influence of the locations of the ring supports on the buckling behaviour of the shells is examined.