Ring Stiffened Cylindrical Shell Structures: State-of-the-Art Review

Abstract

The cylindrical shell is a widely used structure in engineering practice, and its main form of failure is instability due to buckling. As a classical problem in the field of mechanics, the stability of cylindrical shells has been studied extensively. However, the large difference between the theoretically predicted results of the critical buckling load and the experimental results for the cylindrical shells subjected to uniform axial pressure has contributed to the continuous development of the shell stability theory. This paper briefly reviews the development of the shell stability theory, then presents an overview of the current status and trends of stability research on the stiffened cylindrical shell widely used in cylindrical shell structures in real engineering, and finally presents the difficulties and directions of future stability research on cylindrical shell structures in engineering applications.