The Elements of the Buckling of Curved Plates

Abstract

The buckling of a round tube or curved A plate under axial compression is an example of that class of instability in which the initial buckled form becomes itself at once unstable. As a result the buckle immediately develops to a large amplitude, often with loud noise. This class of instability has been aptly termed “oil canning” from a familiar example.Thorough investigation of oil canning problems must always be tedious. As for any buckling problem it is essential to use large deflection theory and, since the amplitude of buckle rapidly becomes large, it is necessary also to consider in detail the distribution of the membrane (or mid-plane) stresses due to the buckle. This necessity, in combination with peculiar buckled forms, renders the complete solution even for a tube extremely difficult and tedious. Moreover, since the buckled form for a complete tube does not accord at all well with the edge conditions for a curved plate, the full analysis for the latter is almost prohibitively difficult.