Characterization of Stress Concentration in Thin Cylindrical Shells with Rectangular Cutout Under Axial Pressure

In this paper, stress concentration in the thin cylindrical shell with rectangular cutout subjected to uniform axial pressure was investigated using a parametric finite element model. Design of experiments techniques and statistical analysis was used to provide a model for characterizing the critical stress in these components. The influences of the geometrical parameters and their combinations were studied in detail. It was observed that the length to width ratio of the cutout, the length and the radius to thickness ratio of the cylinder were significant parameters for describing the stress concentration around the cutout, respectively. By increasing the length to width ratio as a main effective geometrical factor in the stress concentration, the stress around the cutout was increased significantly. Based on the statistical analysis conducted in this study, a formula was derived which can predict the stress concentration around the cutout of the cylinder with the accuracy more than 84% (R2 = 88.7%, R2pred = 84.6%, R2adj= 86.7%).