Elastic and inelastic buckling of ring-stiffened circular cylindrical shells subjected to external pressure

The paper deals with the results of systematic numerical studies on the nonlinear load-carrying and buckling behavior of ring- stiffened circular cylindrical shells under external pressure. In particular it focuses attention on the conditions under which stiffeners with rectangular cross-section lead to either global or local (interstiffener) buckling and on the influence of elastic-plastic material behavior. The numerical results are presented in the form of nondimensional diagrams in which the buckling loads of stiffened shells are given directly as functions of a global stiffening parameter containing all relevant information on both the shell's geometry and the type and arrangement of the stiffeners. They indicate the buckling mode as well as the amount by which the load-carrying capacity of a stiffened shell is larger than that of the corresponding unstiffened one. This makes them particularly useful for practical design purposes. (A)