Buckling analysis of cylindrical shells with random boundary and geometric imperfections

In this paper the individual and combined effects of random boundary and geometric imperfections on the limit loads of isotropic, thin-walled, cylindrical shells under axial compression are presented. Second moment characteristics of these imperfections are estimated by data of available measurements of imperfections, a simulation procedure based on the Karhunen-Loéve expansion is applied for generating realizations of both boundary and geometric imperfections. A nonlinear static Finite Element analysis using STAGS (Rankin et al. 1998) is carried out for the calculation of the buckling response of the cylindrical shells. Histograms of the limit load as obtained by direct Monte Carlo simulation are presented.