Elastic buckling of barrelled shell under external pressure

The aim of the paper is to present a procedure for design of a family of shells of revolution of constant mass and, as a next step, of constant volume. As a reference a cylindrical shell is taken into consideration. By decreasing the value of the meridional radius of curvature R 1 , which for cylindrical shell equals infinity, barrelled shells are created up to the spherical shell for which both meridional and circumferential radii of curvature are equal ( R 1 = R 2 ). A numerical example of using the presented procedure is considered. Then for the family of shells of revolution of constant mass a buckling analysis using FEM method is carried out. Results of the analysis show the relationship between the radius of curvature of the shell R 1 and the critical load p cr in the case of uniform external pressure.