This paper examines the buckling of short mild steel cylindrical shells subjected to axial compression。 Cylinders were joined together using Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welding process with radius-to-thickness ratio, R/t, ranging from 25 to 100。 The axial length of the specimens were assumed to be 111。8 mm。 Past result on axially compressed cylinder machined using Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) ma- chining is compared with fresh experimental results on MIG manufactured axially compressed cylinder。 The paper contains a comparison between theoretical predictions, ABAQUS FE results and experimental data for axially compressed cylinder。 Details about material testing and collapse test are provided。 As compared to the CNC machined specimen, results indicates that there is a good agreement between theoretical prediction, ABAQUS FE results and experimental data for MIG manufactured cylinder with radius-to-thickness ratio, R/t ranging from 25 to 100, with difference ranging 83136

1。Introduction

Thin-shell structures find applications in many branches of engineering。 Typical examples include aircraft, spacecraft, cooling towers, nuclear reactors, steel silos and storage tanks of bulk solids and liquids, pressure vessels, pipelines, offshore platforms, Ref。 [1]。 Cylindrical shells are the most commonly used thin-shell structure geometry。 This is due to its simple geometry and relative ease of manufacture。 Thus, it is not surprising that over the years, large amount of research work has been carried out for this shell geometry。

When in use, cylindrical shells are often subjected to various loadings such as external pressure, internal pressure, axial com- pression, bending, torsion etc。, or combined loading, i。e。, axial compression and torsion, axial compression and external or in- ternal pressure, torsion and external or internal pressure, etc。 For such application, their failure behavior is of great importance。 For thinner cylinders, primarily used in aerospace application, the failure is limited by elastic buckling。 Whereas, for thicker cylinders usually used in marine and offshore application, the failure mode is largely due to plastic buckling。 In fact, the first theoretical shell buckling problem to be solved was the cylindrical shell subjected to axial compressive loading [2]。 However, early test on cylindrical shells reveals that real cylinder fails at much lower load, with experimental values even below 30% of the theoretical load [1]。

The  search  for  this  major  difference  in  both  the   theoretical

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prediction and experimental data has led to numerous researches in the area of imperfection sensitivity of cylinder subjected to axial compressive loading, such as initial geometric imperfection in Refs [3–5], non-uniform axial length in Refs [6–8], non-uniform loading in Refs [9–13], etc。 However, the problem is far from being solved。 In fact, the axially compressed cylinder has been considered one of the last classical problems in homogenous isotropic structural mechanics where it remains difficult to obtain close agreement between theoretical prediction and experimental results [1]

In this paper, investigation into comparison between theore- tical prediction and experimental results of buckling load of short mild steel cylindrical shells subjected to axial compression is presented。 Cylinders were joined together using Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welding process with radius-to-thickness ratio, R/t, ranging from 25 to 100。 The axial lengths of the specimens are assumed to be 111。8 mm。 Predictions based on the ABAQUS FE code [14], are compared with theoretical predictions。 Finally, comparison were made between the result obtained from experiment in this paper and past experiment of axially compressed cylinder machined using computer Numerical Controlled (CNC) machining。