Probabilistic perturbation load approach for designing axially compressed cylindrical shells

The buckling load of cylindrical shells is heavily dependent on geometric imperfections and other nontraditional imperfections such as scattering wall thicknesses or loading imperfections. In this paper, the probabilistic perturbation load approach (PPLA) is proposed. This procedure is independent from costly measurements of geometric imperfections and is able to include various kinds of non-traditional imperfections by integrating the single perturbation load approach into a semi-analytical probabilistic framework. It is shown that the PPLA leads to design loads which are lower than the experimental buckling loads and much less conservative than the ones obtained from NASA SP-8007 in all investigated cases. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.