Neighbourhood effect of two short dents on buckling behaviour of short thin stainless steel cylindrical shells

Generally, thin cylindrical shells are susceptible for geometrical imperfections like non-circularity, non-cylindricity, dents, swellings etc. All these geometrical imperfections decrease the static buckling strength of thin cylindrical shells. In this work, neighbourhood effect of two circumferential short dents on the buckling behaviour of thin short stainless steel cylindrical shell is studied in detail. The dents are modelled on the FE surface of perfect cylindrical shell at half the height of the cylindrical shell by varying the centre distance between the dents. These cylindrical shells are analysed using non linear FE static buckling analysis and their buckling behaviours are compared with that of cylindrical shell with a short circumferential dent. It is found that the effect of two short dents and its nearness effect seem to be negligible compared with the effect of single dent in reducing the buckling strength of cylindrical shell.